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The Connection is excited to be launching a new initiative this year (2025) that will build a “roadmap” for our community on social connectedness.  We are working to develop a set of recommendations of actionable strategies that foster social connectedness and belonging across the tri-county region of Calumet, Outagamie, and Winnebago counties.

Project Summary

We are bringing together a diverse group of community leaders to guide this work, including those who work with communities disproportionately affected by disconnection and isolation (i.e. folks from LGBTQ+  and BIPOC communities, immigrants, older persons, people with disabilities, among others). We know that social connectedness looks different for different communities. This initiative will work to identify and recommend a range of best-practice and promising strategies – a play book of “what works” – for our many communities in Northeastern Wisconsin. The culmination of this work will be a detailed report, outlining recommended actions to improve social connectedness at individual, community, and systemic levels. The report will be shared widely with local nonprofits, health systems, schools, funders, and other stakeholders, providing a guide for future projects and sustaining/expanding existing efforts. We plan to hold a dissemination event in early 2026 to present the findings and mobilize local leaders to act on the recommendations.

Advisory Group

We have assembled a diverse advisory group of community representatives who will serve as thought leaders to:

• Review and map social connectedness projects, programs, and initiatives currently taking place in our community and explore what’s working, where efforts can be aligned, and how we can build on successes.
• Examine data trends in our community and gain a better understanding of the drivers – risk and protective factors – that affect social connectedness, and use that knowledge to inform recommendations.
• Explore and vet potential new strategies that would be a good fit for the various populations in our community.
• Help inform and plan community listening sessions. We plan to convene listening sessions across the tri-county region to hear directly from diverse and disproportionately-impacted community members about what social connection and belonging mean to them.

Why is The Connection leading this work?

Now more than ever, our community – and Wisconsin and beyond –  is acutely aware of the importance of social connectedness and that social isolation and loneliness is a widespread, urgent public health crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the profound effects of social isolation on mental, emotional, and physical health, stressing the need for strong social support systems. Wisconsin’s Division of Public Health includes social connectedness among the state’s top health priorities, citing that we must prioritize upstream efforts to create community conditions that improve health.

In Northeastern Wisconsin, meanwhile, local city and county public health leaders, as well as local hospitals – have identified social connectedness as a key driving factor for physical health, mental health and wellbeing, through their Community Health Assessment and Community Health Improvement Planning processes. As an established and trusted community leader in systems change, The Connection is in an ideal position to bring our community together to build a strategy guide for belonging – built by the people for the people that is grounded in ‘what is true’ for the people of Northeast Wisconsin.