• Houston Chronicle: May 13, 2019

    Hogg Foundation awards mental health grants

    This article describes the Communities of Care initiative, a five-year, $11.5 million 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. Communities of Care is funded by the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health. Prevention Institute coordinates the initiative,

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  • Health Promotion Practice Journal: May 12, 2019

    A System of Prevention: Applying a Systems Approach to Public Health

    Among public health and health care practitioners, there is growing understanding that individuals make choices about their health not in a vacuum but based on the social, physical, and economic environments surrounding them and the resources available to them. Furthermore, we know that as a society, we have designed these environments and resource allocation processes and that those in turn can produce better or worse health outcomes. In recognition of this, some practitioners are turning toward systems thinking as a way of understanding the many sectors and factors that influence health, and as a strategy for influencing broad and sustained health interventions. In this commentary, PI's Juliet Sims and Manal J. Aboelata, describe Prevention Institute’s framework for a systems approach to population health that can achieve health equity.

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  • Public Health Law News: May 1, 2019

    Profile in Public Health Law: Elva Yañez

    Prevention Institute's Director of Health Equity, Elva Yañez, talks with the CDC's Public Health Law News about the importance of parks for health and wellbeing, and how communities can achieve park equity. She says, "PI’s approach to improving park access reflects our belief that equitable community transformation comes from investing in and building community-based capacity, leadership, and organizational infrastructure required for policy, systems, and environmental change."

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  • Kent Reporter: April 26, 2019

    What latest numbers show about firearm homicide in King County

    This piece in Kent Reporter analyzes the data behind gun violence in King County, and points to Prevention Institute's ACE|R report as a resource for understanding how gun violence creates trauma for entire communities.  "Prevention Institute’s report Adverse Community Experiences and Resilience poignantly describes the ways structural violence and exposure to trauma can harm communities by breaking down social networks and relationships, interfering with basic needs, and damaging individual and community resilience. They present a framework for understanding, addressing and preventing community trauma that is being used in programs in King County."

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  • Belleville-News Democrat: April 24, 2019

    You’re 19 times more likely to be murdered in East St. Louis than any other U.S. city

    Belleville News-Democrat reports on East St. Louis, which has the highest murder rate in the country. "Unlike the violence found in other cities, murders here don’t appear to be related to drugs or gangs, but are more random. This makes them harder to solve because investigators can’t rely on informants to divulge the motives and possible suspects for the killings." PI's Rachel Davis is quoted: "The same kind of conditions that increase the likelihood of violence, like unsafe housing, failing schools, and lack of economic opportunity, also contribute to community trauma."

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  • San Francisco Marin Medical Society: April 16, 2019

    Investing in Healthy Communities

    In their op-ed, "Investing in Healthy Communities," PI's Juliet Sims and Matt Willis from Marin County explore funding for community-level prevention initiatives in California going forward. The piece is featured in the March issue of San Francisco Marin Medical Society

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  • Hogg Foundation for Mental Health: April 1, 2019

    Drawing the Circle of Inclusion: The First Step Is Trust

    In this piece featured in the Hogg Foundation's blog, PI's Sheila Savannah writes about how to broaden partnerships to include community voices that are often left out of the conversation. She emphasizes that trust-building through cultural humility and willingness to listen may be challenging, but partnerships can only enact truly meaningful change when they reflect the makeup of the communities they serve.

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  • Central Michigan LIfe: March 19, 2019

    Speaker discusses community trauma at Elizabeth Lockwood Wheeler lecture event

    Maddox Rowland of Central Michigan Life write's about the talk on structural violence and community-driven prevention that PI's Ruben Cantu gave for the 27th Annual Elizabeth Lockwood Wheeler Lecture. "Much of Cantu’s lecture centered around one main theme: Disease and injury prevention takes place in the community, not in a doctor’s office. Cantu said the goal of the Prevention Institute is working with communities to figure out ways to prevent illness and injury before they happen."

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  • Vida en el Valley: March 15, 2019

    ABC’s of your Health: Local non-profit to work on community-based approaches to preventing domestic violence among immigrants Latinas living in Fresno County

    In her article in Vida en el Valle, María G. Ortiz-Briones writes about how Cultiva la Salud, a collaborative in Fresno working to improve the health and wellbeing of low-income Latina women, will engage with Prevention Institute's domestic violence prevention initiative - "Safety through Connections." She quotes Prevention Institute's Lisa Fujie Parks: 

    “Most people don’t realize the ways that the community determinants of health—things like housing, employment, social norms, and social networks—can increase or decrease the risk of intimate partner violence. That’s why it’s so important to look at community factors when creating prevention initiatives. By taking a community-level approach to preventing intimate partner violence, we can address the underlying factors that contribute to violence and inequities in who experiences violence,” 

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