The Bezos Family Foundation has given $30,000, and the C.E. and S. Foundation has provided $15,000 to support the KWC’s health and wellbeing innovation programming for high schoolers throughout the state.

KWC aims to get students excited about public health careers, while they collaborate to solve some of Kentucky’s most pressing barriers to wellbeing. Using STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math) tools, KWC focuses on both technical skills, such as research and digital programming, along with human skills, such as emotional intelligence and complex problem solving.

Theo Edmonds, director of CCP, said, “We hope that KWC will enhance connections, enable action and nurture creativity in young people, moving them toward careers in the health sciences across the state of Kentucky.”

CCP will begin with a small prototype phase in Spring 2021 with partners from Jefferson County Public Schools and Breathitt County Schools. Some of the learning modules are being created with national partners like the Aspen Institute, while others will be delivered through regional partnerships. The program also will include enhancements for students and teachers to improve their own personal wellbeing. The digital, fully online platform will launch in the 2021-22 academic year.

“The style of leadership that the Kentucky Wellbeing Challenge seeks is thoughtful and catalytic. By pairing student contribution with true community need, the program is poised to drive important youth-led change across the state of Kentucky and help improve community health and wellbeing,” said Chris Plutte, managing director, Bezos Family Foundation.

The KWC is part of the Center for Creative Placehealing’s efforts to cultivate a talent pipeline of next-generation public health entrepreneurs, and is one of several initiatives supported by the NSF-funded Center for Health Organization Transformation based in the School of Public Health & Information Sciences.

The KAIH project is an initiative of the University of Louisville’s ˛ą˛Ô»ĺĚý, based in the , along with .

“I have always had the intuitive sense that creative community art can make a difference, but this opportunity will provide not only a method for gauging our success, but the tools to make sure we are headed in the right direction,” Smith said.

Smith is an interdisciplinary artist and educator, and teaches 2D, 3D and digital art at universities in the region. He also is the artist behind Bike Sense Louisville, a public art project that is tracking volunteer cyclists around Louisville, sensing environmental data as they ride and interpreting it into sound on the Big Four Bridge.

A primary component of the KAIH residency is training on the Universal Community Planning Tool (UCPT) developed by the  in Maryland. UCPT uses open-source technology to equip communities with sustainable, culturally-responsive strategies.Ěý

“We’re developing an entrepreneurial population health workforce who thinks differently about how to solve deeply entrenched challenges that require new approaches,” said Theo Edmonds, director of UofL’s Center for Creative Placehealing. “The KAIH residency brings together transdisciplinary teams of community members, researchers, practitioners and creatives, which is the foundation of our pioneering approach to cultural wellbeing.” 

 “Todd will work alongside community members and researchers to adapt the UCPT platform for Kentucky, and I’m looking forward to seeing how his expertise as an artist working with technology informs the process and supports more equitable data-driven decision making,” said Josh Miller, co-founder and CEO of IDEAS xLab. “This artist residency presents a chance to re-rame how we approach urban-rural collaboration in creating a more healthy, just and creative Kentucky.”  

The KAIH Residency is supported by funds from the ; a Community Collaborative Learning Fund award; ˛ą˛Ô»ĺĚýa from the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention through the Kentucky Cabinet for Health & Family Services.Ěý

The Center for Creative Placehealing – which operates in partnership with many outside supporters including government agencies, philanthropic foundations and healthcare providers – aims to grow businesses by bettering the well-being of employees. The first step? Changing the culture of the workplace.

“There’s a lot of businesses and corporations these days that are implementing what they call culture directors, chief culture officers, who look at the culture of a workplace. [Creative placehealing] functions like that,” said Theodore Edmonds, director of the CFCP. “What we’re interested in is how this culture – the good and the bad – impacts health and how can we engage that culture.”

For instance, if you’re an employee of a company, you’re not just an employee of a company. You could be an employee of a company who’s a woman, who’s also a member of the LGBT community, who’s also a member of the Latinx community.

“In a world of complex identity structures, all of those different identities also come with their own cultural norms, so we try to decipher those as an asset that can be built from,” Edmonds said.Ěý

The theory is that businesses only stand to benefit by working to understand their employees, since not only does a culture of acceptance promote innovation, but also lowers healthcare costs.

“In this part of the country, nearly 80% of LGBT employees do not feel safe coming out at work,” said Edmonds. “If you look at a national number, 71% of African Americans believe they have less economic opportunity simply because they are African American. If we’re asking people to think and to innovate but we’re only allowing them to show up as a piece of themselves because you have to look this way, you have your hair this way, you can’t talk this way – that’s really an innovation problem. If you’re only bringing a piece of yourself to work, you’re not going to be able to think in ways that could lead to solutions.”

The Center For Creative Placehealing, though having only been in operation since January, is already making an impact in the world of research. In partnership with the Louisville Metro Government and the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, the center will lead the “Cultural WellBeing 2020 Initiative,” making Louisville the first city in the country to scientifically measure corporate inclusion using primarily health research.

“If you can measure it, you can do something about it,” Edmonds said.Ěý

Edmonds is also an assistant professor at UofL’s School of Public Health and Information Sciences, principal investigator for UofL’s Center for Health Organization Transformation, and co-founder of Louisville’s IDEAS xLab.ĚýEdmonds wrote a four-article series for ArtPlace America that was published online.ĚýThe ArtPlace 2019 Annual Summit took place in May 20-22.

“Our theory of change is this: in our economy, businesses and organizations and companies have a role in shaping the culture in the workplace. Culture, in turn, shapes the well-being of employees and communities, and well-being drives inclusion and innovation,” Edmonds said. “Right now, if you think about it, you hear the phrase ‘cultural competence’ thrown around a lot. Cultural competence suggests that you can go to one training and you got it – it’s a one and done thing. What we talk about is being culturally responsive. Does your organization, does your entrepreneurial network, have practices that are culturally responsive in a way that understands and engages these complex identity structures on an ongoing basis?”

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