Loaded

Revitalizeour community

From left: Indigo Bishop, formerly of the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority; Marilyn Burns, a community leader known as the “Mayor of Woodhill;” and Taryn Gress, strategic director of CWRU's National Initiative on Mixed-Income Communities, walk through the Buckeye-Woodhill neighborhood. (Photo by Matt Shiffler)

Helping Cleveland's residents and neighborhoods thrive

Partnering to propel a neighborhood's renewal

A father and son in front of their house in Buckeye-Woodhill — Photo by Matt Shiffler

Cleveland's Buckeye-Woodhill neighborhood sits just a mile southwest of Case Western Reserve's campus, but to Debbie Wilber, it feels like “a world away.”

After joining the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences in 2020 as assistant director of its National Initiative on Mixed-Income Communities (NIMC), Wilber led an ambitious grant application process to narrow this divide. Thanks to her “quarterbacking,” Cleveland became one of five U.S. communities to receive a combined $160 million to revitalize the distressed neighborhood.

Cleveland's $35 million grant will support 600 new mixed-income rental units, a health clinic, an early childhood education center, retail space and more.

20 years Grover “Cleve” Gilmore served as dean of the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences before retiring in June; University of Toronto's Dexter R. Voison took the helm Jan. 1, 2022

Just as important, the project incorporates insights community members provided in interviews with researchers like Taryn Gress (SAS '11), strategic director of NIMC.

“Housing matters. But more than that, community matters,” Wilber said of the importance of intentionally designed, inclusive neighborhoods. “I love thinking about and influencing how communities are designed, who designs them and how we can ensure that they are places where everyone can thrive.”

“This is an opportunity to give residents the housing, amenities and quality of life they have always deserved and have worked tirelessly to achieve, despite incredible barriers.”

Taryn Gress

CWRU's technology team helps bring affordable high-speed internet to East Cleveland

When COVID-19 forced education online, the digital divide's impact became even starker. So Case Western Reserve's University Technology team joined a public-private partnership designed to increase affordable high-speed internet access in East Cleveland, one of the nation's poorest cities.

One of a dozen institutions involved in the effort, the CWRU team assisted with infrastructure essential to connecting as many as 2,000 low-income households to the internet.

A shave, a haircut—and a cancer screening

With Black men in Northeast Ohio 80 percent more likely to die from prostate cancer than their white peers, researchers recognized they needed to try a new approach.

Or, in this instance, a new place: the barbershop.

The unconventional idea came from conversations with the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center's Community Advisory Board about how to increase potentially lifesaving preventive screenings.

The best way to get buy-in from Black men, board members like local barbershop owner Waverly Willis explained, is “to meet people where they are.”

The idea impressed the Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation enough to award the center a $2.75 million, three-year grant to collaborate with health providers, community navigators and barbers themselves. The goal? To develop materials and messages that resonate—and, ultimately, move customers to participate.

And program leader Erika Trapl (CWR '00; GRS '04, '07, epidemiology and biostatistics), an associate professor in the medical school, sees potential beyond greater Cleveland.

“The idea has taken off,” Trapl said, “thanks to the partnership of people living in this community. We hope it will become a national model.”

Creating mathematical models to predict COVID-19's spread locally

Among the most unsettling aspects of the pandemic has been how it inserted uncertainty into nearly every part of daily life. For months, no one knew precisely how it spread, what steps could prevent it or when it might end.

But then faculty at Case Western Reserve and University of Akron launched a forecasting tool for Northeast Ohio that proved eerily accurate. The projections assisted public health entities and hospitals in planning—and also offered residents an idea of what was ahead.

As medical school assistant professor Johnie Rose (GRS '10, epidemiology and biostatistics) said at the time, “People are hungry for these numbers.”

Rose's interdisciplinary team also included Case Western Reserve mathematics professors Daniela Calvetti and Erkki Somersalo, as well as Akron's Eric Hoover.

8 faculty and staff members named COVID-19 Champions and Runners Up for their efforts helping the campus and broader community

“Having the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of others is perhaps the greatest privilege we all have.”

Interim President Scott Cowen

Reimagine the Future