Bobbie Harte
Jamie Pekarek Krohn.
Jamie Pekarek Krohn wanted to improve access to preventative services.
If you haven’t heard of Be Well MSN, a wellness-focused group that launched in 2018, don’t feel too bad. “We’re very very much under the radar,” says the group’s director, Jamie Pekarek Krohn.
Be Well MSN, whose mission is “improve individual and community health by increasing equitable access to preventative wellness services for all and centered on groups that have been historically marginalized,” grew out of the Madison Area Wellness Collective, a group of wellness professionals meant mainly for internal networking.
Pekarek Krohn, a psychotherapist, says she had begun to “feel a real pull to get out of my office and to see if I could do something about health equity,” at the same time that the collective was getting more requests for its members to offer services at area wellness fairs.
The collective, not set up for that purpose, held some internal focus groups to see if it wanted to branch out and “be more public-facing, making services easier to access,” says Pekarek Krohn.
After establishing an advisory board, the new Be Well MSN secured a fiscal sponsor so the group could receive tax-deductible donations, with the aim of “getting some funds to go to the community centers, where people are at, and provide services that were relevant to them. It was all about finding out from the community centers what their residents wanted and needed — and providing it.”
A 2021 survey conducted by the group showed interest in topics including meditation, walking/running groups, mental health and nutrition. Also in 2021, the group held four “Live Well @ Your Library” wellness events at area library branches.
Pekarek Krohn worked on developing programming to meet those needs, and getting funds to provide them. She was sensitive to “not wanting to burn out people in the wellness field by [asking them] to do a lot of pro bono work. It isn’t sustainable and I wanted this model to be sustainable. I wanted to pay the providers at least something, even if not their normal rates, to mitigate burnout and build sustainable programming so we weren’t just going in and then leaving.”
Be Well MSN launched right as COVID started, but still developed partnerships — with Bridge-Lake Point-Waunona, Lussier, Bayview, East Madison, Kennedy Heights and Vera Court community centers, and offered sessions including youth mental health, acupuncture, yoga and massage.
That was working, Pekarek Krohn says, even with COVID restrictions. Less sustainable was Be Well MSN’s fundraising. She was spending most of her time looking for funding, something she was never trained to do. At the beginning of 2024, she “pivoted,” rearranging Be Well MSN’s website to provide a list of practitioners available to come to community centers; the centers or other nonprofits would have to connect and work out the funding.
“I wish this was more of a success story,” says Pekarek Krohn. But it illustrates the catch-22 for many small nonprofits. They end up needing a professional fundraiser. But how do they pay that person?
This month, Pekarek Krohn, who has returned to private practice, will check with providers and community centers to see how the list has worked. “I know some programming is still happening, and I feel good about making whatever connections we did, and bringing a greater emphasis on well-being to the community centers,” she says.
Does it make sense to go forward as Be Well MSN? Pekarek Krohn wonders if there is an umbrella organization that would be a better fit to take on the mission or oversee this list, “where more eyes can see it, an organization with a broader audience and more resources to keep nurturing and growing the list.”
Because, she notes, the need is ongoing.
