Southwest Health Earns Statewide Award for Sexual Assault Response Partnership

PLATTEVILLE, Wis. — Southwest Health has received the 2026 Global Vision Community Partnership Award for its work with the Southwest Sexual Assault Resource Team, a regional partnership that helps survivors of sexual assault in rural southwest Wisconsin reach compassionate, trauma-informed care.

The award, presented by the Wisconsin Hospital Association Foundation, was given to Southwest Health’s Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner nurses along with a $3,000 grant to support the partnership’s work. Leigh Ann Larson, executive director of the Wisconsin Hospital Association Foundation and vice president of education and corporate partnerships, presented the award.

The partnership, known as SART, was established in 2013 and brings together health care, advocacy, law enforcement, higher education and prosecution partners to improve the regional response to sexual assault. Its partners include Southwest Health, the University of Wisconsin-Platteville, the Platteville Police Department, Family Advocates, the Grant County District Attorney’s Office and other regional partners.

At the center of the effort is Southwest Health’s Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner program, which provides specialized medical-forensic care. The program has grown from one specially trained nurse to five, expanding access to trained examiners in a rural region where specialized care can be difficult to reach.

The award recognizes the scale of the need the partnership addresses. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s 2023/2024 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey estimates that 43.2 percent of Wisconsin women, approximately 971,000 people, have experienced contact sexual violence in their lifetime, and that 24.5 percent, about 551,000 Wisconsin women, have experienced completed or attempted rape.

The Global Vision Community Partnership Award was first given in 1993. It recognizes community partnership projects that work with a Wisconsin Hospital Association member hospital to meet an identified community health need in an innovative or creative manner. Southwest Health and Aspirus Wausau Hospital were named the 2026 recipients.

Southwest Health also credited Terri Fugate, director of its Emergency Department, for her leadership of the partnership, along with its nurse examiners and all of the partnership’s members. The partnership has remained active for more than 13 years.