The Foundation for Black Women’s Wellness worked with Cortico to train staff and volunteers to record and analyze conversations with Black women in Wisconsin, using those stories to shape programs, advocacy, and a forthcoming health policy platform.
Listen in to Rachel sharing about what she sees as the barriers to health and wellbeing.
Read on to learn more about how Cortico worked with the Foundation for Black Women’s Wellness.
“The information that we collected with Cortico is so rich. It helps us illuminate data points in a different way, communicating through people’s stories and experiences.”
–Alia Stevenson, Chief Program Officer for Foundation for Black Women’s Wellness
The Foundation for Black Women’s Wellness (FFBWW) is building a policy platform around what Black women need to be a well Black woman in Wisconsin. Cortico partnered with FFBWW to help amplify existing conversations about the topics of healthcare, racism, and barriers to access that the Foundation was already gathering.
Cortico trained staff, ambassadors and volunteers to facilitate conversations that would center Black women’s concerns, experiences and hopes. The stories shared have already informed the Foundation’s programmatic offerings and strategic direction, and also proven to be a critical tool for advocating on behalf of community members whose voices are often overlooked, particularly around health and wellness.
Ultimately, the themes that run through these stories will inform the creation of the Foundation’s policy platform, which will be shared on a public website alongside the policy recommendations. The stories have already been well received in public presentations, in both community and academic contexts, as a humanizing complement to quantitative data. The Foundation hopes to integrate them into white papers, an article for a medical journal, and in grantseeking efforts.
Learn more: Listening to Black Women: Wisconsin Medical Journal Article