Allow us to introduce you to The MORE Project, an initiative designed to: prevent HIV transmission, increase trauma-informed HIV screening and improve access to services for people living with HIV; reduce violence against women and support women to reduce harm from intimate partner violence (IPV); and promote social norms that protect against IPV by engaging men in workshops and curricula examining traditional gender norms. Find out why we went with “MORE” and how you can get involved here.

We’re happy to announce that on Tuesday, June 30th, IWES was named as one of 49 organizations across 26 states that received a grant award under the Health and Human Services’ Office of Population Affairs’ Optimally Changing the Map for Teen Pregnancy Prevention (Tier 1) initiative. Building upon 10 years of providing adolescent health education and as a three-time awardee of grant funding under the federal teen pregnancy prevention (TPP) initiative, IWES is setting out to implement a scaled-up, re-imagined version of its trauma-informed Believe in Youth - Louisiana (BY-LA) program—BY-LA 2.0. Learn more here.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused IWES programs to discover new strategies to deliver our services and programming for an indefinite time. Therefore we have made changes in all of our departments in order to heed local, state, and national guidelines and still deliver quality programming. Read on to get an update on each program and how we are doing the work. This page will be updated periodically as the situation develops.

Our Collective for Healthy Communities (CHC) program is excited to continue providing direct services to members of the New Orleans community. Over the past few years, CHC has partnered with various groups in New Orleans to facilitate group and individual mental health services. One of our current partners is Hotel Hope, “a nonprofit, interfaith organization that provides housing to women and their children while guiding them to self-sufficiency and self-empowerment through intensive case management in a safe and loving atmosphere.” Find out more about the partnership in this article.

For the newest iteration of our powerful In That Number campaign, we are focusing on the education, criminal justice, and healthcare/hospital sector and how they can be trauma-informed. For our call-to-action, we believe a crucial first step is to have trauma-informed training for mental health professionals. Read on to learn more about our current campaign and what you can do.

In the summer of 2019, IWES staff created a short film entitled i’m still me for Visual AIDS’ 2019 Day With(out) Art series, Still Beginning. i’m still me profiles the experiences and activism of Sian Green, an African American woman living with HIV that is a member of IWES’ HIV Testing & Prevention program’s Community Advisory Board as well as a Peer Advocate. Read on to learn more about i’m still me.

On August 9th, 2018 it was resolved that New Orleans would seek to become a more compassionate and trauma-informed city. The New Orleans Children and Youth Planning Board (CYPB) was tasked with creating a year-long Task Force that would examine the issues surrounding Childhood Trauma and provide the City with recommendations to address them. On October 17th, 2019, CYPB Executive Director Karen Evans, Dr. Sanders and Dr. Shervington made a brief presentation to the City Council before handing over the 200+ page report. Find out more in this blog.

Our latest narrative short film And What Happened After That? premiered at this year's 30th Annual New Orleans Film Festival in the Louisiana Shorts: Right Place, Wrong Time block. A question that we received multiple times was, “Well, what happened after that, and when can we watch it again?” Don’t worry, we’re always devising ways to bring you more high quality, realistic, and culturally resonant films, with health-focused information sprinkled in between the entertaining parts!

New Orleans, as well as many cities in the United States, has been in the spotlight for the current upward trend of maternal mortality and morbidity rates. To address this alarming trend, Merck has invested in cities so that a woman doesn't have to die while giving life through a $500 million global initiative entitled Merck for Mothers. New Orleans is one of the nine cities selected to carry out Merck’s investment in Safer Childbirth Cities over a three-year period. IWES, along with our partner organizations the Birthmark Doula Collective and the National Birth Equity Collaborative (NBEC), will be working together to successfully implement this new initiative and expand our current work. To learn more about the partnership and how we will achieve our goals, check out our blog.

We are excited to announce that IWES was selected to administer two new HIV focused grants. The first grant is from the Office of Women’s Health, which recognizes the intersections between intimate partner violence (IPV) and increased risk for HIV infection. They also recognize the need for comprehensive, patient-centric, and trauma-informed care for affected women to prevent negative health outcomes associated with IPV, particularly HIV infection.

On July 11, 2019 Dr. Denese Shervington, President and CEO of IWES, gave testimony to the United States Congress Committee on Oversight and Reform. Dr. Shervington was invited to give expert testimony by Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) in the first Congressional committee meeting ever held to address trauma as a public health crisis. The theme, Identifying, Preventing, and Treating Childhood Trauma, brought together trauma survivors, notable scholars, medical experts, and community leaders to identify meaningful steps that elected officials can take to address the growing impact of trauma in United States. This historic conversation was an acknowledgment of a national crisis that demands governmental intervention and response. Read more about how our work has helped to inform this historic conversation.

School is in session, along with our Believe In Youth - Louisiana (BY-LA) program! As the doors to schools all across the state begin to open, our health educators will also return to schools and community centers bringing critical health information to Louisiana teens. Over the summer our team was busy preparing for the upcoming year by onboarding new health educators, expanding our network of sites and getting ready to make sure we can provide another stellar year of BY-LA. Read about our summer and why we are excited about this upcoming school year.

Following Hurricane Katrina there has been a lack of investment in mental health services in New Orleans. To address this gap, in 2016 a team made up of journalist Jarvis DeBerry and IWES staff members Lisa Richardson and Iman Shervington was chosen by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) to join the first cohort of their Culture of Health Leaders (CoHL) program. Following RWJF’s Culture of Health Leaders framework and commitment to Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, the Team spent two years in leadership development courses and convenings and in their third and final year they have been developing a “strategic initiative” to build a Culture of Health in New Orleans. The initiative builds on the success of IWES’ city-wide, public will campaign, In That Number, and in conjunction with the City’s Childhood Trauma task force they have posed the question, “What would a trauma-informed New Orleans look like?” See how our In That Number campaign is finding answers to that question by going to our blog.

For the past nine years, Walgreens and Greater Than AIDS have partnered with health departments, community-based organizations, and clinics across the US to provide confidential, FREE HIV testing, counseling, and health referrals at designated Walgreens locations. This year National HIV Testing Day was held on June 27th with the theme of “Doing It My Way” that emphasized and celebrated the importance of why individuals choose to get tested while providing new and returning clients with information on other options to prevent and treat HIV like PrEP. With over 260 sites participating in National HIV Testing Day this year, the day was not only geared towards addressing the need for HIV testing, but also highlighting the importance of centering the conversation of HIV health disparities in our homes, churches, and communities. Click the link below to read more about our participation for National HIV Testing Day.

Here at IWES we have always kept the communities we work alongside at the center of our work. By working with the community we are able to deeply involve our people in our process—from community advisory boards to parent committees. This year, thanks to experts in human-centered design thinking, we are granted the opportunity to take this philosophy to new heights. In partnership with Texas A&M University and Power to Decide, IWES is propelling into the next wave of program design in teen pregnancy prevention. Follow this link to find out more about our human-centered design programming and see how it fits in with IWES’ mission.

IWES’ HIV Testing and Prevention (HTP) Program is consistently releasing new rounds of Role Model Stories (RMS) on all of our social media platforms. Our Role Model Stories are true testimonials of individuals in our very own community who have made positive behavior changes to reduce their risks of acquiring or transmitting HIV, including getting tested, using condoms or adhering to treatment. Read on to learn about these critical narratives and how they’re impacting communities in New Orleans.

Since Hurricane Katrina flooded 80% of New Orleans’ housing stock in 2005, the city has struggled to address the problem of widespread blight. Abandoned properties, dilapidated buildings and vacant lots have been a part of the city’s landscape for decades. In the aftermath of disaster, blight became a public health threat and a glaring reminder of the unhealed wounds left by Katrina. To assess how the health of a neighborhood impacts the health of it’s residents, IWES has partnered with the Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. To see what this 5-year project will look like, check out more in our blog.

Since Spring 2017, IWES has been offering a positive youth development program to girls ages 11-19. The Creating a Truer Self (CATS) Program, offers young girls health education and skill-building that encourages them to make responsible decisions through building self-esteem, recognizing healthy relationships, creating a positive self-image and learning the importance of nutrition and exercise. Find out more about the newest group we hosted with CATS, working with teen moms in Marrero that participate in the YoungLives program.

As 2018 wound down, our most recent sex education initiative ramped up. Since last November, 237 young adolescents have been enrolled into seven cycles of Catapult in schools across New Orleans. What’s Catapult, you may ask? To answer that question, check out our blog.