MUSCATINE, Iowa–As Charla Schafer often points out, a lot more than just good medical care goes into public health. Ensuring people have access to affordable housing, good jobs, nutritious food, and educational opportunities for themselves and their kids play a huge part in keeping individuals and communities physically and mentally healthy. Through her work as Executive Director of the Community Foundation of Greater Muscatine, and previously as Director of Muscatine Center for Social Action, Schafer has played a role in numerous projects that address all these community health needs. For this work, Schafer received the designation of Iowa Public Health Hero from the University of Iowa College of Public Health.

After a successful career at First National Bank, Schafer came to work at Muscatine Center for Social Action after serving as one of their board members. She found, “working with Sister Irma and Maggie Curry, and seeing the impact MCSA had on individuals and our community,” rewarding, and happily stepped into her new role after former Board President Travis Sheets invited her to do so.

During her time as Muscatine Center for Social Action director, Schafer contributed to a number of projects to improve the lives and wellbeing of people facing homelessness or nearing homelessness, including providing more permanent supportive living opportunities, partnering with Muscatine Community College to make accessing short-term certificate programs easier, and bringing more health and wellness services on site for clients to utilize.

Following her three years with the Muscatine Center for Social Action, Schafer stepped into her current role as the director of the Community Foundation. Though she found leaving the center bittersweet, she welcomed the chance to have a positive impact on even more people. “It was a difficult choice to leave MCSA–I love the people there and the work we were doing, but Scott Dahlke was aptly ready to fill my role, and the Community Foundation mission to enhance the quality of life of Muscatine County seemed to be the right choice,” she remembers.

Since 2018, the Community Foundation has found numerous opportunities to improve public health in Muscatine. Beginning in 2019, the foundation worked with community partners to offer the Fueling the Future program, which helps families in need break the cycle of poverty by offering parents short-term certificate programs that eventually result in their employment and provide wraparound services to ensure their success. In 2020, the Foundation also started the Racial Justice Grant program to give organizations the dollars they need to create programming to ensure that people of all races have the educational opportunities and community resources they need to thrive. The following year, the Foundation attended Muscatine’s first ever housing summit, which has sparked work on a variety of projects to reduce the workforce housing shortage. This year, the Foundation has gotten to work in earnest to construct a new physician clinic at UnityPoint Trinity Muscatine Hospital to help Muscatine County attract and retain more primary care and specialty doctors.

An honor she never expected to receive, Schafer felt humbled to rank as one of Iowa’s Public Health Heroes: “I have been blessed to work with good people that care and have served as mentors. There are so many fingerprints on all the work that is done to better serve the community, I have played a very small part.”