Quinton Cotton Named Lifecourse Initiative for Healthy Families Program Officer

Madison, Wisconsin - Quinton Cotton, MSSA, will join the Wisconsin Partnership Program (WPP) in July as program officer for the Lifecourse Initiative for Healthy Families, the Partnership's up to $10 million commitment to improve birth outcomes among African-Americans in Wisconsin.

Cotton will work with community coalitions in Beloit, Kenosha, Milwaukee and Racine as work begins on implementation of the community-action plans created during the first phase of the Lifecourse Initiative for Healthy Families project.

He will serve as a conduit between the coalitions and the Wisconsin Partnership Program and support project grantee work to ensure planned outcomes are achieved.

Cotton joins the Wisconsin Partnership Program from the Planning Council for Health and Human Services where, among other duties, he served as project coordinator for the Milwaukee Lifecourse Initiative for Healthy Families during the planning process. In this role he successfully brought together more than 400 diverse individuals and groups within the Milwaukee community.

The Wisconsin Partnership Program started the Lifecourse Initiative in 2008. Wisconsin's infant mortality rate for African-Americans is among the worst in the nation. An African-American child born in Wisconsin is three times more likely to die before his or her first birthday than a white child.

In 2010, the Wisconsin Partnership Program awarded planning grants to coalitions in four cities to create community-action plans that used evidence-based practices to close the racial disparity in birth outcomes. These plans focus on extending access to quality health care, strengthening families and communities, and addressing social and economic inequities. The implementation phase will launch this fall.

A Milwaukee-native, Cotton has devoted his professional life to community development and social work education. Before joining the Planning Council, he served as program coordinator at the Glenville Development Corporation in Cleveland, working on community-based education and employment training.

In addition, he is a lecturer at Marquette University in the Department of Social and Cultural Sciences and has served on the faculty of Concordia University of Wisconsin.

Cotton received his BA from Marquette in 2004 and earned a Master of Science in Social Administration from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.