Building thriving communities helps foster mental health and wellbeing for everyone. When community members feel connected and have safe places to gather, and when they have access to affordable housing and good jobs, they experience less stress and anxiety. Conversely, exposure to repeated violence, displacement, and other traumas—or Adverse Community Experiences—undermines communities’ and individuals’ wellbeing.
Prevention Institute collaborates with a range of community partners to shift policies, practices, and norms to create conditions that support mental health and resilience. We partner with community-based coalitions to shape strategies that reflect their priorities and draw on their history, culture, strengths, and assets. Transformation may start with creating a safe space for young men at a bike shop, or engaging faith leaders to help de-stigmatize depression, or connecting veterans to ease re-entry to civilian life. These community changes, large and small, along with the collaborations required to make them happen, ultimately strengthen mental health and wellbeing across communities.
COVID-19 and the national outcry for racial justice has illuminated a need for coordinated, culturally-specific and proactive ACEs and suicide prevention efforts. Through a cooperative agreement with the CDC, PI has partnered with the National League of Cities and Dr. Howard Pinderhughes to offer training and tools to local government and their partners in supporting their communities.
UWEAST and its partner organizations work to prevent suicide. They have opened up a dialogue about mental health with community members; encouraged faith leaders to speak out about post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and suicide; and partnered with other local organizations to provide young men with leadership and career development training.
Through Making Connections the Southern Plains Tribal Health Board staff are making suicide prevention among American Indian youth a priority. The project empowers students in Anadarko and the Oklahoma City area to address and prevent suicide among their peers.
MC Team Lead Becca Krauss is a psychotherapist at Mount Sinai Hospital. Advancing mental health requires clinical expertise and recognition that wellbeing happens at a community level. When violent crime is common, so are trauma and toxic stress which play out in settings like classrooms and playgrounds.
Communities of Care is an initiative that supports collaborative approaches to wellbeing in the greater Houston Metropolitan Area, with a focus on children and youth of color and their families. Its goal is to strengthen efforts to transform the environments where people live, learn, work, play, and pray to support resilience, mental health, and wellbeing.
Safety in All Policies: A Brief on Engaging the Education Sector in Preventing Violence in California focuses on the education sector and describes eight recommended actions at the local level and potential roles for the California Department of Education and the California State Legislature in support of these local efforts.
Building thriving communities helps foster mental health and wellbeing for everyone. When community members feel connected and have safe places to gather, and when they have access to affordable
Making Connections for Mental Health and Wellbeing Among Men and Boys is leveraging the power of communities and connection to shift policies, practices, and norms to create greater opportunities for health and resilience. This four-page overview provides details on the partners, strategies, and aims of the initiative.
New infographic explains how improving community conditions can enhance wellbeing as well as social, behavioral, and physical health.New infographic explains how improving community conditions can enhance wellbeing as well as social, behavioral, and physical health.
When sectors work together to address violence, not only can they fulfill their particular mandates, but they can also better serve communities and improve outcomes for children and youth. Prevention Institute and Futures Without Violence partnered to explore the benefits of engaging multiple sectors in reducing traumatic exposures and inform the Defending Childhood Initiative, as a first of its kind initiative to address children’s exposure to violence, as well as similar efforts that are underway around the country. Using a Collaboration Multiplier analysis, this paper details the assets each sector – education, health, justice, and community, the differences that must be bridged, and possible multi-sector strategies.
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