Mental Health & Wellbeing

Making Connections for Mental Health and Wellbeing Among Men and Boys is a national initiative to transform community conditions that influence mental wellbeing. Fourteen communities across the U.S. are developing and activating strategies to improve conditions that can affect the wellbeing of men, boys and their families, including social connections, economic and educational opportunities and assets, and improvements in the physical environment.The Movember Foundation is funding the work; Prevention Institute is providing coordination, training, and technical assistance; and a team from the University of South Florida is evaluating progress and outcomes. 

Until now, there has been no basis for understanding how community trauma undermines resilience and mental wellbeing, especially in communities highly impacted by violence, and what can be done about it. With the support of Kaiser Permanente Community Benefit, PI and Dr. Howard Pinderhughes developed the Adverse Community Experiences and Resilience (ACE|R) framework. PI also works with communities, sectors, and policymakers to address and prevent community trauma, and to foster community resilience.

Prevention Institute and the Center for the Study of Social Policy are collaborating to identify the strategic policy, practice, systems, and norms change levers to make communities safer, so that all children have the opportunity to develop optimally and participate fully in the fabric of community life.

Mental health is at the heart of many of the challenges we face, including trauma and adverse childhood experiences, social isolation, institutionalized bias and discrimination, and ‘diseases of despair’ that manifest in depression, suicide, and substance misuse. Addressing social determinants of health is key to helping communities navigate adversity, heal, and flourish. PI’s new report, Back to Our Roots: Catalyzing Community Action for Mental Health and Wellbeing, illustrates how improving community conditions can reduce the incidence and intensity of mental health challenges, and help activate resilience.

This report was developed by Prevention Institute for the Movember Foundation to help shape its strategic direction and resource allocation for its mental health focus in the U.S. The report describes the mental health landscape in the U.S. and, in particular, the mental health and wellbeing of boys and men.

This first-of-its-kind framework explores trauma at a community level. It explains how trauma is produced not only by experiencing interpersonal violence but also by experiencing structural violence – the harm that individuals, families, and communities experience from the economic and social structure; social institutions; and social relations of power, privilege and inequity that inhibit them from meeting their basic needs.

What? Why? How? Answers to Frequently Asked Questions About the Adverse Community Experiences and Resilience Framework builds off of core concepts in the Adverse Community Experiences and Resilience Framework and addresses questions that have emerged in early practice and implementation.

Since the initial development of the Adverse Community Experiences and Resilience Framework in 2016, multiple networks and communities have shared it, as well as adopted, adapted and/or implemented it to address and prevent community trauma. Adverse Community Experiences and Resilience: Learning from Practice reflects valuable lessons from their practice.

THRIVE is a tool for assessing the status of community conditions and prioritizing them for action to improve health, safety, and health equity.

The Spectrum of Prevention is a systematic tool that promotes a multifaceted range of activities for effective prevention. The Spectrum identifies multiple levels of intervention and helps people move beyond the perception that prevention is merely education and serves as a framework for a more comprehensive understanding of prevention that includes six levels for strategy development.

The United Women of East Africa, an organization originally created to serve refugee mothers and their children in San Diego, reached out to other groups in their close-knit community and forged a partnership to address concerns facing young men as part of the Making Connections initiative.

Ohio’s Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services is utilizing the Framework to drive its statewide opioid prevention efforts and strategy in partnership with 12 communities. They are specifically using ACE|R to build trauma-informed coalitions and identify drivers of substance misuse.

The Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department embraced the ACE|R Framework in its community-driven planning process to improve mental wellbeing for boys and men of color and LGBTQ youth, particularly in efforts that focus on healing as a starting point for collective action.