URBAN YOUTH INITIATIVES
Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University
1996/1997


October 17, 1996


Media Contacts: Sarah Goodwin, 404/727-3366 - sgoodwi@emory.edu
Kathi Ovnic, 404/727-9371 - covnic@emory.edu
http://www.emory.edu/WHSC/





Center for Substance Abuse Prevention
Obesity Prevention Project
Project HEAL and Project MARTIN
Project MARTIN
Project LEAP
Youth, Firearms and Violence
Kids Alive and Loved (KAL)
Goal-Setting for Young Parents
Stress in African-American Women




Center for Substance Abuse Prevention



Emory behavioral scientists have been awarded a grant from the U.S. Center for Substance Abuse Prevention to begin Project Excellence - a three-year initiative aimed at reducing substance abuse among inner city youth, ages 12-15. Under the direction of Principal Investigator Ken Resnicow, Ph.D., project coordinators hope to bolster positive behaviors by improving each student's academic performance, self esteem, family relations and cultural identity. The project will be conducted through Atlanta Housing Authority developments located in two housing communities: Grady and Harris Homes.

A key feature of the project will be the establishment of academic excellence centers in each housing development. Participating youth will gather at the excellence center in their housing development to work with trained educators and social service professionals in academic and recreational activities. After completing their homework (tutorial services will be on-hand), students will engage in activities such as photography, African dance, arts and crafts, t'ai chi, and trips to local historical and cultural sites, sporting events, and historically black colleges and universities.

Parents of participating youth will attend a series of bi-monthly empowerment workshops, addressing topics such as "Improving Your Resume," "Getting Your GED," "Stress Management," "Accessing Health Care," "Parenting Skills" and "Nutrition." Additionally, staff will conduct monthly home visits to parents to discuss the child's progress and the parents' own personal growth.

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Obesity Prevention Project



An obesity prevention project targeted toward overweight African-American youth will take place in Atlanta Housing Authority developments. The project will be coordinated by Dr. Resnicow and is being funded through a subgrant given to the National Foundation for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Researchers will test the effectiveness of an Afrocentric approach to weight loss. Future projects include interventions in which pediatricians motivate overweight youth or programs which target preadolescent youth. The projects build upon prior experience of Emory investigators with large-scale, government-funded interventions based in housing developments, such as the recently completed smoking cessation program in Harlem.

Project HEAL and Project MARTIN



Reynoldstown Civic Improvement League, Reynoldstown Revitalization Corporation and community representatives from Summerhill, Capitol Homes, Martin Street Plaza and King Village announced in early 1995 a partnership between themselves and the Rollins School of Public Health of Emory University, Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School and the Fulton County Health Department.

The partnership was created to support two programs designed to foster education, leadership and the prevention of substance abuse: Project HEAL (Health, Empowerment and Leadership) and Project MARTIN (Mentoring Adolescents Through Risk Reduction, Training, Insulation and Nurturing). The combined programs have been awarded approximately $2.5 million to serve the community for a three- to five-year period. Ronald Braithwaite, Ph.D., associate professor of behavioral sciences and health education at the Rollins School of Public Health is coordinating Emory's involvement in the projects.

Project HEAL provides an opportunity for the community residents, Fulton County Health Department staff and university students and faculty to be involved in planning and implementing health promotion programs, such as health screenings for breast cancer, t'ai chi classes for older adults, high school career development workshops and violence prevention training.

Project HEAL is focused in the Reynoldstown community. It is funded through the Bureau of Health Professions and the Health Resources & Service Administration (HRSA) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Between Project HEAL and Project MARTIN, health prevention jobs have been created for 25 high school students and 12 adults from the involved communities.

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Project MARTIN



Project MARTIN (Mentoring Adolescents Through Risk Reduction, Training, Insulation and Nurturing). As mentioned above, this project came about through a unique partnership announced by Reynoldstown and other community leaders. Project MARTIN will involve selected students at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School who reside in one of the following five communities: Summerhill, Capitol Homes, Martin Street Plaza, King Village and Reynoldstown. The project is funded through the federal Center for Substance Abuse Prevention. This project also has an HIV prevention component. MLK Jr. students will soon begin painting two Olympic murals near the Marietta Street corridor.

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Project LEAP



Joyce Essien, M.D., director of the school's Office of Public Health Practice, is Emory's primary liaison to Project LEAP (leadership, empowerment and partnership). Sponsored by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Project LEAP is an initiative by Emory, Morehouse School of Medicine, health departments in Fulton and Cobb counties, and three Atlanta communities (including University/John Hope Homes, Kennesaw Village and Rose Garden Hills) to empower citizens to improve health. The Project offers to residents of public housing developments, workshops on health topics ranging from childhood immunization, asthma and AIDS prevention to contraception and abuse. The philosophy of the initiative is very much based on enabling the communities to determine their own health needs and supporting their own solutions to health problems. Melva Covington, Ph.D., is Project LEAP program coordinator.

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Youth, Firearms and Violence



In addition to their expertise in motor vehicle trauma, bicycle helmet promotion and injury control systems in managed care, researchers at the Emory Center for Injury Control are heavily invested in firearm and violence research. Their research on topics such as the risk of handgun injuries in the home has appeared in leading medical journals including the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Center staff issued three bold and well-publicized reports to local media during fall 1995 about the status of youth gun violence in Atlanta. Emory investigators conducted the research in collaboration with the office of the U.S. Attorney General for the Northern District of Georgia, compiling juvenile crime statistics from the Georgia Crime Information Center and youth death statistics from offices of county medical examiners. They worked with Ketchum Public Relations, whose staff gathered qualitative data during focus group sessions with teens from across Atlanta about how kids get guns and why they use them. Atlanta adults were polled regarding their views on youth violence. The researchers also conducted more than 50 face-to-face interviews with law enforcement officers and juvenile justice system personnel and interviewed more than 70 incarcerated adolescents to garner their views on rising youth crime and what can be done to change this trend.

Future plans at the Center include:
  • The "Cops and Docs" firearm injury notification system, which will be implemented within the five-county area of Metro Atlanta Project PACT (Fulton, DeKalb, Gwinnett, Clayton and Cobb counties). The objective of this system is to provide a new tool for law enforcement that will assist in case resolution, crime analysis, resource allocation and internal evaluation of zone or precinct-based crime prevention efforts. This proposal is supported by Metro Atlanta Project PACT and is funded by the National Institute of Justice.
  • Continuing work with grass roots community organizations on issues of violence and injury prevention and intervention. Over the past year, representatives of community organizations have come together at meetings sponsored and organized through the Center for Injury Control and the Kids Alive and Loved program to discuss common goals and the possibilities for collaboration on shared initiatives.
  • The center director, Arthur Kellermann, M.D., M.P.H., has been active in speaking at academic, professional, allied health and community meetings and programs on firearm and youth violence issues. These have included presentations at the annual meetings of the American Public Health Association, United States Department of the Treasury, and others. Upcoming presentations are planned for the Boys and Girls Clubs of America conference on youth gangs and violence, and the National Crime Prevention Council.


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Kids Alive and Loved (KAL)



Kids Alive and Loved (KAL), a community-based violence prevention campaign with headquarters at the Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, was founded in 1993 by Bernadette Leite, whose 17-year-old son, Khalil, was shot and killed in downtown Atlanta.

"In the process of grieving, I discovered one possible solution to youth violence is to provide social support for kids suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder directly related to the death of someone they love," says Ms. Leite, who holds degrees in psychology and counseling.

Unresolved trauma and grief place youth at risk for being victims or perpetrators of violence in the future, Ms. Leite says. The KAL model takes advantage of the credibility of survivors, based on their life experience, to reach other youth like themselves. Youth are recruited to KAL by word of mouth and through bedside interviews with gunshot victims at Grady Memorial Hospital Emergency Trauma Unit and the Hugh Spalding Children's Hospital. Over the past three years, KAL has trained youth survivors to disseminate accurate information about the nonviolent management of conflict using the "each one teach one" peer education model.

"Our primary aim is to establish a community-based outreach network needed to deliver posttraumatic stress intervention services to youth survivors of violence and their families," says Stephen B. Thomas, Ph.D., KAL evaluator and director of the Institute for Minority Health Research at the Rollins School of Public Health.

The KAL support group meets every Wednesday at Crawford Long Hospital of Emory University. With financial support from Kaiser Permanente, Neighborhood Cobb, the Metropolitan Atlanta Foundation and Northside United Methodist Church, KAL will expand baseline posttraumatic stress screening services and recruit youth into an innovative "Living Mask" art therapy program designed to help kids express how they cope with the death of someone they love.

"The use of art therapy and posttraumatic stress interventions are well established in work with children living in the war-torn areas of Bosnia and Rwanda," Dr. Thomas says. "What we have to realize is that far too many of our children right here in America are living in war zones."

According to Ms. Leite, "Some violence prevention programs focus on taking back the streets. We believe that if we take back our kids, the streets will take care of themselves."

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Goal-Setting for Young Parents



The Women's and Children's Center at the School of Public Health is working with GHR (Georgia Department of Human Resources) to develop strategies to help young parents achieve short-term life goals. Intervention strategies include linking Women, Infant and Children (WIC) supplemental nutrition services for pregnant and parenting teens with counseling for family planning in order to reduce the likelihood that a teenager will have a repeat pregnancy. Every time a client comes to the WIC clinic to pick up a food voucher, she is eligible to meet with the same counselor to discuss issues related to consistent and correct contraceptive use, prevention of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, negotiation of contraceptive use with partners, planning for achievement of educational and vocational goals and identifying strategies for child care. Parents and partners who pick up vouchers for a WIC client are also eligible for counseling, a component of the intervention designed to recognize key people who influence teen decision-making regarding childbearing. Sheana Bull, an associate at the Center, coordinates these efforts.

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Stress in African-American Women



The Women's and Children's Center also is developing the means to measure - and reduce - stress among African-American women. Research shows that college educated African-American women as compared to their white counterparts experience higher rates of low birthweight and preterm delivery in their pregnancies and are at greater risk of developing high blood pressure and breast cancer, all perhaps as a result of higher levels of stress, says Center Director Carol Hogue, Ph.D. Working with social scientists at Spelman College, faculty in the Women's and Children's Center are seeking to capture the life experiences of African-American women, as told through their own voices, for developing a scale to measure the impact of stress and strain on health outcomes.

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