By Wendy Harris

Project Coordinator @ The Connection

Nearly a decade ago, Winnebago County Public Health began hearing something unexpected from residents.

It didn’t come through a checkbox or a predefined survey category. It surfaced when the county added a simple, open-ended question to its 2016 community health assessment: What else is affecting your health?

The answers kept repeating. People talked about not knowing their neighbors, recalled Stephanie Gyldenvand, who was working as a public health strategist for the county at the time. They talked about feeling unwelcome. About rarely talking face-to-face anymore. About feeling like they didn’t belong.

When the responses were tallied, the theme that emerged – what staff would later call “social place connectedness” – ranked just behind mental health as one of the community’s top health concerns.

At the time, there wasn’t clear language to describe what residents were naming, Gyldenvand said.  But through their responses, people were consistently pointing to the same experience: a growing sense of disconnection that was affecting how they felt, lived, and experienced health in their daily lives.

Doug Gieryn, Winnebago County Public Health Director and Health Officer, recalls that the findings reflected broader shifts already unfolding in everyday life, changes that many people felt but had not yet named as a health issue.

“In hindsight I didn’t appreciate at the time how much more would come of it and in so many places,” Gieryn said. “We recognized how people were becoming more isolated, less friendships, less knowing the neighbors, less getting together, smaller yet busier young families that leave less time for non-school or non-activity based relationships, more screen time, the difficulty of making new relationships as adults, and how that contributed to loneliness and, for many, depression and sense of belonging to something bigger than themselves. The quieter our lives become, the louder purpose speaks. Without purpose it’s hard to be motivated and engaged. Our connections give us purpose.”

From “Fluffy” to Foundational

That was in 2016, and naming social connection and belonging as a public health priority was not an easy sell.

“It was considered fluffy and not a public health issue,” and more about friendships than health outcomes, recalled Gyldenvand, who now works as the Director for Grant Making for the Basic Needs Giving Partnership. When social connection was discussed, it was usually siloed: older adults, specific racial or cultural groups, LGBTQ+ communities. Rarely was it framed as a population-wide health condition.

Despite skepticism, Winnebago County made a notable move. It explicitly included social connection and belonging in its Community Health Improvement Plan (CHIP) in 2016, becoming one of the first jurisdictions in Wisconsin to do so.

That decision helped establish social connection and belonging as legitimate public health priorities, signaling that they were not simply social concerns, but foundational drivers of community health.

Letting the Data – and the People – Lead

To strengthen its case, Winnebago County Health pursued grant funding to dig deeper. With grant support, the county analyzed both youth and adult health and behavior survey data to identify which populations were most at risk for disconnection – and the downstream health impacts that followed. They held listening sessions. They created reports and shared their findings through presentations across the state. They even hosted a community event featuring Paul Born, co-founder of the Tamarack Institute and an internationally recognized leader in strengthening community belonging.

Wisconsin’s State Health Officer at the time, Jeanne Ayers, took notice and invited Stephanie to present the county’s findings to state officials. As conversations about social connection gained momentum, the State of Wisconsin’s Division of Public Health incorporated social connectedness and belonging into its State Health Improvement Plan as one of five health priorities for 2023–2027.

Around the same time, national research was reaching similar conclusions. In 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General released Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation, an advisory that reinforced what residents had been saying for years: social disconnection affects mental health, physical health, substance use, and even whether people show up for medical care at all.

A Region Aligns

Fast forward to today. Earlier this month, the Tri-County Community Health Improvement Coalition released its Community Health Report 2025, marking the first time Calumet, Outagamie, and Winnebago counties aligned around a shared community health assessment process.

Notably, the report uses the Vital Conditions for Health and Well-Being framework, which places belonging and civic muscle at the center of how health is understood. Alongside housing, transportation, education, and economic stability, the framework recognizes that feeling connected, valued, and able to participate in community life is foundational to health.

This alignment did not happen overnight. It reflects years of learning across organizations, sectors, and communities – much of it rooted in earlier work like Winnebago County’s initial efforts to name and understand social connection as a health issue. This is what collective impact looks like in practice. The work is often messy and nonlinear. Ideas emerge in one place, take root in another, and gradually shape how an entire community understands a complex or “wicked” problem.

Over the past decade, our region’s understanding of health disparities has evolved. What once felt diffuse and difficult to define is increasingly understood through a shared lens: that social connection and belonging sit at the heart of many outcomes we care about, from mental health to economic stability to community safety. The formation of the Tri-County Community Health Improvement Coalition reflects this growing alignment – a shared understanding of the problem that now allows partners to move toward more coordinated and aligned action.

Building on What Came Before

The story of Winnebago County’s early work is not one of completion, but of groundwork. Over the years, other organizations, coalitions, and initiatives have also worked to strengthen relationships, build community, and address the conditions that shape connection. Part of Connected Fox Valley’s role is to gather what has come before – the data, reports, community conversations, and lived experience – and carry that learning forward.

This work did not begin with a single initiative, and it will not end with a single report or strategy. This work is expansive, ongoing, and deeply human. What it requires is patience, curiosity, and a willingness to remain in the complexity as communities continue learning how to strengthen belonging and connection together.

As we continue to carry this work forward, this site is intended to serve as both a roadmap and a shared strategy guide – a place where partners and community members can align around emerging best practices, evidence-informed approaches, and practical ideas for strengthening social connection across the region.

Wendy Harris, Project Coordinator for Connected Fox Valley, can be reached at wendy@newmentalhealthconnection.org