Meet the Bioneers: Kim Neuschel & Jessica Leclair
Posted: 1:06PM August 31st, 2011 | Comments
[This is the third in a series of 5 profiles of the individuals who belong to the 2011 class of Badger Bioneers. Remember to visit our dedicated Bioneers page on this site as of September 1 to purchase tickets to this year's Bioneers conference!]
Kim Neuschel & Jessica Leclair - Nurses, Public Health Madison & Dane County
The Meadowood neighborhood sits astride Raymond Road, on Madison’s southwest side. During the latter half of the 2000s, the area was pulled deeper into poverty and crime by an increasingly strong undertow. In less than a decade, the percentage of low-income students jumped from 14 to 57 percent at Orchard Ridge Elementary, the neighborhood’s primary school. Crime rates were climbing steadily, including an alarming increase in gunplay and shootings.
If the neighborhood were a person whose health was flagging in such a fashion, it would have been sent straight to the emergency room to see a doctor.
Instead, this community was sent a pair of public health nurses.
That’s because Kim Neuschel and Jessica Leclair recognize that where you live determines how you live. They are working in southwest Madison to improve neighborhoods while improving health.
And vice versa.
“People don’t think, ‘Oh, my park is nice and I feel safe to go play,” Neuschel explains, “and understand that that’s public health.” With rosy high cheekbones and a glinting smile, she looks like an energetic, young Meryl Streep.
She continues, “People don’t think, ‘Oh, the city comes and picks up my garbage from my street corner,’ – that’s public health.”
Traditional models of public health have largely emphasized smoking cessation and exercise. Neuschel and Leclair have pieced together a new approach to public health, a holistic view of community well-being that addresses “health equity” based on the social conditions of the places where people live and work.
Neuschel and Leclair’s work focuses on social justice, civic engagement, and sustainability. The overall goal is building social capital – place-based characteristics like beautiful neighborhoods, neighborly relations, cross-generational interaction, employment opportunities – to alleviate the stressors that are leading causes of death in urban communities today: heart disease and violence.
So when violent crime and spiked in Meadowood, Neuschel and Leclair sat down with residents and had dinner. The simple act of gathering together has yielded major results -- though Neuschel asserts that that shouldn’t come as a surprise.
“It doesn’t cost anything to hold a meeting,” she says.
One of the most visible results of these community sessions are edible community gardens which have sprung up in front yards along Russett Road. The gardens, planted each April for the last three years by neighborhood volunteers, are filled with vegetables and native flowers, harvested to compensate for the lack of quality local grocery stores.
“There’s a myth that people won’t care for things in low-income neighborhoods,”says Neuschel.
“We decided to blow that myth out of the water.”
In 2008, the city and county health departments merged and, in the process, paired up Neuschel and Leclair. Neuschel had already been in the Meadowood community for a few years, doing more “traditional” community nursing, like tending to newborns and doing referrals to clinics. Jessica Leclair, Neuschel’s equally bubbly and bright partner, came to nursing seeking ways to help people live more sustainable, healthy lifestyles. But she realized the barriers to health were highest for those with the fewest resources.
“If people can’t take care of themselves, how can they care for the planet?” Leclair asks.
Neuschel and Leclair are working in southwest Madison at the forefront of a burgeoning movement around the country that seeks to ameliorate social barriers to health. Gardens aren’t the only solution, either.
Community meetings have become regular and depended-upon forums for designing creative solutions to neighborhood concerns. A new Meadowood Neighborhood Center has reinforced a sense of place for residents; the recently-formed Southwest Neighborhood Organizing Committee is bringing together city and community representatives to dialogue about the resources needed to improve the block.
And a resident counted over thirty butterflies in one front-yard garden.
She had never seen a butterfly.
