The FLEx Study has made significant progress over the past year by working deeper with other IWES staff departments, increasing participant incentives, expanding community partnerships, and engaging youth at in-person events and through our Youth Advisory Council (YAC). Thanks to these efforts we’ve improved enrollment, boosted community involvement, and encouraged active youth participation in some unique ways, so check out this full article to see just how it’s going!
Read MoreIn 2025, the Maternal Child Health Coalition made great strides in collaboration, growth, and advocacy. Notable events, such as the Black Birth Matters (BBM) regional events and improved research efforts, helped us achieve this. The coalition is focused on building strong partnerships with community leaders and supporting key health issues in legislation. We are also excited to work with the Louisiana Coalition for Reproductive Freedom. Looking ahead, we are dedicated to creating a Common Agenda that represents the diverse voices in the maternal and child health community, aiming to improve health outcomes statewide. Discover more about MCH's collaboration and growth this year by clicking the button below to read the full blog post!
Read MoreOur Research & Evaluation Team has had quite the year focusing on initiatives that support children, families, and community well-being as a whole. From expanding the reach of our Film Learning Experience (FLEx) Study to documenting a collaborative process to benefit young families to enhancing community safety, we have been busy supporting internal and external projects keep track of their progress and impact and think through ways to be more effective, expand our reach, and build evidence to advocate for new norms and practices. Click the link below to read more about our exciting achievements in the past 12 months!
Read MoreThis year, our Media & Communications department stayed busy not only creating new media projects, campaigns and social media content, but also partnering with film festivals, leading narrative change workshops, and launching the Rise Up Jamaica initiative. We continue to see storytelling as a powerful tool for social change and community healing, and are always excited to collaborate with partners that recognize and capitalize on the power of art for good, art for justice, and art for health. Looking ahead, we hope to continue to inspire and engage you all with meaningful content and materials that create a lasting impact; click the button below to see how!
Read MoreWhile our Collective for Healthy Communities (CHC) had many achievements in 2025, what we are most excited about is the continued development of a new focal area within our community-level mental health work; Arts as Medicine. This lane of programming is aimed at enhancing youth mental health through creative expression, emphasizing the importance of collaboration, diversity, and community support in driving innovation and healing. This year we began learning from artists and educators, drafting and testing out modules and lessons, and learning new methodologies and pedagogical frameworks to help us refine our teachings. Find out how that programming has been developing in our blog, and make sure to read until the end! Our CHC Director, Christina Illarmo, has a very important message — and activity! — for you, and it just may change how you close out 2025 and move into the New Year!
Read MoreThe BETA Project had a very busy 2025, working with organizations across the United States actively engaged in devising community-driven strategies to improve the access to health and health systems in their communities. This year the BETA team got to travel to Worcester, MA, Albuquerque, NM, Greensboro, NC, and Spartanburg, SC to meet our partners in person and see how they are driving collaborative, community-based change that centers racial healing and learns from each site’s historical context. Looking forward to next year, we will continue to support local leaders to grow their leadership skills, tell the story of their work, and deepen collaborations so that they can push for systems change that benefits the health and well-being of their communities. But before we jump ahead to 2026, click the button below to get a glimpse of what the sites are working on and what we learned about how to do community-partnered systems change work in these times!
Read MoreHave you ever wondered if specific sound frequencies can be healing? Or if engaging in a rageful music experience could be cathartic? This summer, our CHC Program Associate Jemila Dunham (who also happens to be a rather talented musician!), explored this and other questions in a very unique and life-changing experience. As Jemila said, “these are just some of the questions my classmates and I dreamed up and explored during our time in a small summer lab at UCLA. But this isn’t a lab you’ll come across in most university course listings. This was the Songwright’s Apothecary Lab and, frankly, there’s nothing else really like it.” To find out what the Lab was about, and what Grammy winning multi-instrumentalist esperanza spalding had to do with it, click to read!
Read MoreEvery now and then you hit a turning point in a project where things just click. We’re excited to announce that is exactly where we are right now with one of our newest initiatives, which is actually an adaptation of a previous project designed to improve health outcomes. What started as Aligning for Equity (A4E) has officially evolved into a project with a deeper community focus, redefined aims, and new partnerships. IWES family, we’re proud to introduce you to a new project designed to transform healthcare systems through collaboration, community-power building, and the centering of community voice; welcome to The BETA Project! Discover what The BETA Project is all about, including its background, updates, and future goals, by reading the full blog post.
Read MoreBounce Back is back! Our previously named Champions NOLA initiative was an expansion and adaptation of our arts as medicine programming through the creation of a mental health curriculum infused with the arts and movement, and now it has “bounced back” to our original name and been renamed Bounce Back since this title perfectly encapsulates its energy and purpose. Click here to read the full blog post to understand why we made the change and learn about this new initiative designed to improve youth mental health.
Read MoreGet ready for the launch of Champions NOLA, a new program designed to reduce the impact of trauma on children in schools, communities, and at home. Click to learn more about one of our newest programs, and find out what’s coming up next with our Champions!
Read MoreTo kick off the new year this January, the Puentes Para Invitados team traveled to Albuquerque for a week of commemorations in honor of the 2025 National Day of Racial Healing (NDORH), observed on Tuesday, January 21. Click to learn more about the current work being done in our Puentes Para Invitados project.
Read MoreThis year has been full of ups and downs, a few hard lessons, and yet still, many moments we will cherish. Throughout all of the highs and lows, one core thing has remained; gratitude. In this year we’ve gone from winning awards and competitions to launching a new podcast to exchanging experiences and wisdom with new partners from around the world, yet we have also experienced moments that threatened to damage our reputation and impact our ability to offer the programs, tools, and services that we hold so dear. All of that said, we are grateful for so many things, and most of all, we are grateful for you. Follow this link to see what lessons we learned from 2024 and what we’re doing to come back stronger and more committed in this Letter from our Editor, Iman Shervington.
Read MoreThis year our Media & Communications (COMMS) division reached new heights, with awards and recognition for our film projects, successful collaborations with all of IWES' programs, and the launch of our "You Deserve A Doula" campaign, which featured a brand new podcast in our Healing is the Revolution series, "Should I Get A Doula?". Recognize anyone or any event in the collage? If it got your attention, make sure to click on the link below to find out about all of the media projects we got to work on this year.
Read MoreIn 2024 our Research & Evaluation division had the privilege of closing out some long-standing projects and further strengthening newer relationships. Find out what came out of our participation with Tulane's Healthy Neighborhoods Project, which examined the connection between housing blight and community well-being, and what new resources and tools are to come from our partnership with UNITY of Greater New Orleans, examining hurricane preparedness in Orleans and Jefferson parishes. Click the button below to read more about all of the work we've done this year, including new collaborations across programs, and an expanded IRB!
Read MoreThe word of the year is “collaboration,” and this year our Maternal and Child Health division made significant strides in improving maternal health in Louisiana by working collaboratively with many other organizations to support four important bills that were successfully passed, host Black Maternal Health Advocacy Day, and launch our "You Deserve a Doula” campaign. We’re proud to have raised awareness about doulas and maternal health policy, and we look forward to expanding this work even further across the state in 2025 to address maternal health disparities on a larger scale. Click to find out more!
Read MoreIn 2024, our Collective for Healthy Communities team celebrated another successful year, with our biggest highlight being our Bounce Back event — a free community gathering for youth centered on healing and creativity. We’re also proud of a few big accomplishments, like being a runner up in a national challenge, presenting two posters at the 2024 American Public Health Association (APHA) conference, and expanding our work in schools. Click above to read more about this year's highlights!
Read MoreIn 2024, our Adolescent Health division served over 500 youth and families through three new programs; Sexual Health for Adolescents Rooted in Equity (SHARE), and our two trauma-informed curricula, Creating a Future Together (CrAFT) and Are You Ready?. Our partners allowed us to reach more people and strengthen the skills of professionals who work with youth, such as health educators in Jamaica that will be adapting the CrAFT curriculum to their cultural context. Click to read more about what we have been grateful for this past year, and what we look forward to in 2025!
Read MoreWe’re not going to sugarcoat it; it is a pretty heavy time right now, and before we rush to push through the many phases of grief, we want to take a moment to acknowledge and sit with what we’re feeling now. Pain. Disappointment. Confirmation. Rage. Frustration. A sense of invisibility. Those are just a few thoughts that come to mind in a sea of mixed emotions. And we also want to pause and check in with you all; how you are doing…for real?
Read MoreIWES has partnered with the Policy and Research Group (PRG) to launch the Film Learning Experience (FLEx) Study. The study invites young people aged 14-21 to take part in a one-time Entertainment Education session that explores topics about sexual and reproductive health (SRH). Study recruitment launches September 1st, so click the button below to learn more and get involved!
Read MoreHave you heard of our Bounce Back initiative yet? If not (and even if you do!), you’ll want to read the blog post linked below to learn more about the Bounce Back youth event we hosted in March by the Bounce Back Collective (a cohort of high school and college-aged youth who explored what resilience meant to them). Learn more about our events and gatherings, and discover why we started this collective of artists and creatives interested in healing and building resilience by reading the full blog post.
Read More
