WINRS works at the intersection of health, equity, and community. Our mission is to amplify patient and community voices in research.
Who We Are
From proposal development to project dissemination, we help you maximize the impact and relevance of your work by helping you effectively engage with patients and community around you.
We lift up the value of community wisdom in research to nurture partnerships between researchers and community members. By bringing these groups together, we can enhance the quality, cultural applicability, and visibility of your research. That way, you can create a more meaningful impact.
We’ve worked with research teams across the country. Here is what they have to say:
“From a researcher standpoint, there’s no way I could assemble a group like that… It would be years of relationship and trust-building. To be able to tap into that resource is incredible. CARDS shows up so genuinely, are so engaged and so generous with their input. They put so much trust in researchers and are so open with us.”
Simon Goldberg
UW-Madison
Center for Healthy Minds
“I tell everyone who will listen that the CARDS meeting was the most valuable experience from our year of pilot testing our new curriculum. Thanks to the feedback we received we made significant improvements. The program would not be as robust and successful as it is today without the detailed and thoughtful feedback we received from CARDS.”
Jenny Abel
UW-Madison Division of
Extension
“I enjoyed the CARDS’ ability to see the vision of the work and provide really critical feedback on a conceptual and abstract level; we were able to create a shared understanding of the model and principles and then the CARDS was able to give great suggestions on clear language, elements that are missing, etc.”
Laura Block
UW-Madison School of
Medicine and Public Health
WINRS knows that patient and community involvement is vital in producing rigorous research that promotes connectivity, discovery, and inclusion. That’s why we partner with local Madison community centers and other Wisconsin nonprofit organizations in our work with the Community Advisors on Research Design and Strategies (CARDS) and Board of Older Adult Advisors (BOAAs).
Our Campus Partners
WINRS works with many campus partners to collaborate, mutually inform, inspire, and support one another’s work.
Sample Projects
Collaborating with the Wisconsin Hmong community to create a culturally and linguistically appropriate end-of-life planning curriculum
Maichou Lor
UW-Madison School of Nursing
UW-Madison Extension developed a planning curriculum – Planning AHEAD – designed to help people make financial and healthcare end-of-life decisions. CARDS reviewed and offered feedback to the planning team during curriculum development.
Pilot courses conducted in the community revealed that the curriculum would not be helpful for the Hmong community because it did not reflect the community’s beliefs and practices. The aim of this project was to work with representatives from the Wisconsin Hmong population to adapt the curriculum to the needs of Hmong residents.
WINRS supported the project team through grant writing and project planning, development of recruitment flyers, development of materials and co-facilitation of the project team orientation meeting, as well as consultation support throughout the lifetime of the project.
Barriers and facilitators to telehealth appointments
Edmond Ramly
UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health (now at Indiana Bloomington University)
Telehealth appointments have been increasing in frequency and popularity since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet, there are many barriers to effective telehealth appointments, which may lead some patients to postpone or forego their medical visits. This project aimed to collaborate with advisory boards of patients and healthcare providers to identify barriers and their equivalent facilitators, with the goal of building a tool that could be used by primary care clinics to support patients who are struggling to have effective telehealth appointments.
CARDS was one of the standing community advisory boards that consulted on this project throughout its duration. CARDS met with the research team multiple times to iteratively develop and refine a list of barriers and facilitators to telehealth appointments.
Advancing Health Equity for Lupus Patients in WI
Christie Bartels
UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health
Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) care and outcomes are associated with significant racial and socioeconomic disparities in the US. This project aimed to address gaps in SLE care by consulting advisory boards of patients, healthcare providers, and SLE experts on barriers and facilitators to SLE care, then using these data to adapt interventions previously developed for other chronic health conditions that have been shown to improve outcomes and equity.
WINRS supported this effort by developing strategic agendas and facilitating multiple meetings of patient advisory boards and healthcare provider advisory boards.
The advisory boards endorsed an intervention based on review of Electronic Health Records, which would identify and remind patients who were off-schedule for the clinic visits, labs, or medication adherence. They also supported the use of a Patient Navigator (nurse, pharmacist, social workers, scheduler, insurance navigator) to support patients with medical and resource knowledge.
LIFT WI Legal Tune-Up Billboard Campaign
Erica Nelson and Sarah Davis
LIFT WI
Legal Tune Up is a free online tool developed by LIFT WI to help Wisconsinites with common legal needs. CARDS reviewed several billboard designs prepared by Adams Advertising as part of the LIFT WI Legal Tune-Up advertising campaign. CARDS offered feedback on the language and visuals of the designs, whether they were compelling, felt trustworthy, and were easy to understand. The revised billboards were featured in Dane and Jefferson counties.
WINRS supports any project or research team that wants to engage with the community. See below for a sample list of recent WINRS projects.
Breastfeeding
- The Development and Piloting of the Breastfeeding and Employment Study Implementation Guide (BESt-ING) – Beth Olson, UW-Madison College of Agricultural & Life Sciences, Nutritional Sciences
Cancer
- Reducing breast cancer imaging disparities experienced by minority women – Anand Narayan, UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health
- Survey of cancer screening in incarcerated women – Grace Blitzer, UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health
- Increasing Socioeconomically Disadvantaged Patients’ Engagement in Breast Cancer Surgery Decision Making through a Shared Decision Making Intervention – Heather Neuman, UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health
Childhood Nutrition
- Co-development of a recruitment poster for a childhood nutrition research study – Allison Couture, UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health
Community-based Healthcare
- Creating Communities of Care through Community-Based Public Health Nursing – Linda Denise Oakley, UW-Madison School of Nursing
Community-engaged Research
- Just Research: Testing a Pro-Diversity, Socially Normative Educational Intervention to Promote Inclusive Research Practices among Investigators and Research Staff – Susan Passmore, UW-Madison School of Nursing
- Validating Health Equity Benefits from the Translational Science Benefits Model with Community Members – Shannon Casey, UW-Madison Institute for Clinical and Translational Research
Community Engagement with Law Enforcement
- Community engagement in contemplative training and research with law enforcement – Dan Grupe, UW-Madison Center for Healthy Minds
Diabetes
- Developing the Survey Instrument: Recognizing Access and Management Associated Diabetes Adversities in Nationwide Muslims in the US (RAMADAN) – Asma Ali, UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health
Eye Health
- Implementation of Teleophthalmology in Rural Health Systems – Yao Liu, UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health
Heart Disease
- A stakeholder-engaged approach to cardiovascular disease prevention in the Forest County Potawatomi Tribe – Anupama Joseph, UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health
- Feasibility and Acceptability of Accessible Congenital Heart Disease Survivor Transition Readiness for Long-Term Health – Krisjon Olson, UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health
- Piloting an Accessible Care Model to Reduce Pediatric Congenital Heart Disease Patients Lost in Transition to Adult Care- Krisjon Olson, UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health
- Accessible Transition Readiness Assessment (aTRA): Adapting an Intervention for Congenital Heart Disease Survivors with Disabilities – Catherine Allen and Krisjon Olson, UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health
- Creating Long-Term Health Parity by Closing the Gender Gap in Critical Congenital Heart Disease – Krisjon Olson, UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health
Mobility
- Shared experiences surrounding mobility and feedback on a prototype medical grade cane – Sybil Berry
Organ transplantation
- A liver for a kidney: Exploring the feasibility and ethics of trans-organ exchange – Carrie Thiessen, UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health
Pregnancy and Prenatal Care
- Identifying Outcomes and Implementation Strategies to Optimize Prenatal Care Coordination – Katie Gillespie, UW-Madison School of Nursing
- Crisis pregnancy centers infographic – UW-Madison Collaborative for Reproductive Equity
Psychedelics
- Psychedelic Outcomes: Interaction of Environment, Self-Identity, and Success (POIESIS) – Cody Wenthur, UW-Madison School of Pharmacy
- Exploring Attitudes and Perceptions related to Psilocybin-Assisted Therapy among Underrepresented Cancer Patients – Megan Miller, UW-Madison School of Nursing
- Psylocybin for Opioid Study – Randy Brown, UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health
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Tobacco use research
- Reducing Racial Disparities in Smoking: The Milwaukee Collaboration – Megan Piper, UW-Madison Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention
- Addressing disparities in tobacco treatment: A pilot study to understand cancer patients’ diverse experiences of tobacco cessation services – Rachel Grob, Jane Evered, UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health
Well-being
- Promoting cognitive flexibility/emotional regulation, restoring well-being and preventing suicidality through wake meditation and temporal interference electrical stimulation during sleep – UW-Madison Center for Healthy Minds
- Machine Learning to Predict Well-being – UW-Madison Center for Healthy Minds
- Optimizing human and just-in-time digital support in app-based meditation training for depression and anxiety – Simon Goldberg, UW-Madison Center for Healthy Mind
How to work with us:
If you’re ready to engage the community in a way that is meaningful and beneficial to both your research team and community members, WINRS can help.
Fill out our Meet with Us form to discover if WINRS is the right partner for you. Receive an initial consultation at no cost.
