Community Health

EDC is writing a manual on pandemic preparedness for schools in an effort to protect the health of students, staff, and families across the globe. It will be distributed through the World Health Organization. The manual is intended to help administrators and teachers with pandemic planning and response in schools. It emphasizes the need for school-based efforts to prevent the spread of influenza.

EDC is developing a web-based course on pandemic preparedness and response for communities. The primary audience is local decision-makers and practitioners, with additional modules for specific audiences.

While research has identified a number of effective suicide prevention strategies, many have not been put into practice. Through this project, EDC will create toolkits with easy-to-use educational materials and interactive resources that will also focus on institutional and personal barriers that prevent suicide from being addressed in each setting, and provide motivation to create more positive environments.

EDC will produce two new 10-15 page publications—one specifically targeted for veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan and the other for their families. They will be based on the VA National Center for PTSD’s successful publication for war veterans, “Returning from the War Zone”.

EDC, with support from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, will collaborate with Latino parents, youth, and community agency staff on the development and dissemination of a Spanish-language version of the proven Saving Sex for Later intervention. This is an innovative, evidence-based, and user-friendly parent education program designed to promote healthy sexual and reproductive choices on the part of young adolescents. It consists of a set of three audio CDs and accompanying print brochure, which will be available in both English and Spanish.

EDC and Medgar Evers College of the City University of New York are developing and pilot testing the Keep It Up program targeted to African American and other Black young men in high-poverty communities with high rates of HIV. Keep It Up embeds HIV behavioral prevention in a broader health promotion campaign. The goal is to reduce the stigma surrounding HIV and reach a population that bears a disproportionate burden not only of HIV/AIDS, but also other health problems—hypertension, high cholesterol, diabetes, asthma, and other STIs.

Latino men who have sex with men (MSM) continue to be disproportionately impacted by HIV/AIDS, and existing behavioral interventions do not meet their prevention needs. EDC is developing and evaluating the No Excuses/Sin Buscar Excusas one-session video-based intervention designed for culturally- and geographically-diverse English- and Spanish-speaking gay and bisexual Latino men. Working with community partners in New York City, a randomized efficacy trial is enrolling approximately 400 men, with the goal of testing whether the intervention reduces risk behaviors and promotes HIV testing.

This exploratory qualitative study asks: How do youth and their parents in high-poverty urban environments conceptualize, recognize, and respond to teen mental health problems? Building on over a decade of research conducted with New York City schools serving low-income families, this study uses a theoretically and empirically informed qualitative approach. Focus groups and in-depth interviews with parents and their adolescent sons and daughters are being conducted.

EDC HHD Asia together with adidas and the Foreign Capital Project Management Center State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development (FCPMC), designed a Migrant Worker Capacity Building and Better Factory Pilot Project based on the results of a needs assessment conducted in 8 supplier factories in Shanghai and Guangdong areas in early 2008. We have successfully engaged Asia Foundation, Oxfam, GTZ, Right to Play to participate in the two-year pilot project.

OJJDP created a national effort to enhance the development of mentoring programs for youth involved in the juvenile justice system, juvenile reentry, and foster care. This initiative promotes collaboration among community organizations and agencies committed to supporting mentoring services for system-involved youth. Its objective is to identify and support the development of new and effective mentoring programs and determine how to expand these models for system involved youth.