From September 6-9, 2023, thousands of people living with HIV and people impacted by HIV gathered in Washington D.C. for The US Conference on HIV/AIDS (USCHA), which is organized by the National Minority AIDS Council (NMAC). Attendees included activists and advocates, service providers, medical practitioners, sex workers, researchers, representatives from community-based organizations and AIDS service organizations (ASOs), government personnel, and even a filmmaker and communications specialist from a small non-profit in New Orleans; our Sr. Director of Media & Communications, Iman Shervington. Read this full blog post to learn more about this gathering and what “a love letter to Black women” means as Iman dives into details about how putting Black women first and centering their voices within the HIV/AIDS realm is crucial to End the Epidemic. 

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Hurricane preparedness is deeply important in New Orleans, a city that is often threatened by and experiences the harmful impacts of powerful storms. In partnership with Unity of Greater New Orleans, the IWES Research & Evaluation (R&E) team started a study titled Factors Impacting Hurricane Emergency Preparedness among Low-Income and Other Vulnerable Populations of Orleans and Jefferson Parishes. Read this blurb to learn more about how we seek to understand the disaster-related experiences of vulnerable populations living in Orleans and Jefferson parishes.

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This February, the IWES Research & Evaluation (R&E) team embarked on an evaluation partnership with the New Orleans Health Department’s Healthy Start program (HSNO). This community-based program supports parents in New Orleans throughout their pregnancy and after the birth of their child, helping them access community resources and medical care. To learn more about this collaboration, read this full blog post.

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We are excited to share the incredible updates regarding our HRSA community-level intervention, piloting HIV Stigma Reduction Campaign, originally designed as a training resource for clinical personnel, community awareness for the general public, and healing resources for people with HIV. In the past year we have rolled out HIV Stigma Reduction Campaign materials including a documentary film, New Nickels, a film discussion guide, and beautiful HIV stigma reduction print material to pilot this new initiative. Read more about our HRSA HIV Stigma Reduction Campaign updates on this post.

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From Girls Rock New Orleans’ Summer Camp to a water-fun day at Hotel Hope, our CHC team is delighted to support the community this summer with some fun and creative initiatives. Read more about these activities on this blog post!

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We're extremely proud of our illustrious board member, Dr. Stephani Hatch, who on March 30, 2023 delivered a phenomenal inaugural lecture in honor of becoming a Professor of Sociology and Epidemiology at King's College London.

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This April we celebrated Black Maternal Health Week (BMHW), a week-long campaign created by the Black Mamas Matter Alliance to build awareness, activism, and community-building to amplify the voices, perspectives and lived experiences of Black Mamas and birthing people. This year's theme was “Our Bodies Belong to Us: Restoring Black Autonomy and Joy!” and we hope you enjoy reading our reflection on this week and what we look forward to in the MCH space!

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IWES has a new teen health initiative! The IWES Adolescent Health team, in collaboration with our Communications and Research & Evaluation departments, has launched a new program based around IWES’ newest narrative short film, Happy Birthday, Leonard, and it is designed to increase condom use among youth involved or at risk of being involved with the juvenile justice system. Read more about this new program, here!

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On April 1st, members of our Research & Evaluation team welcomed the youth participants of the Catapult/Global Early Adolescent Study (GEAS) back for a closeout bash! Click to read more about this research study that took place over a few years, highlighting the importance of frequent communication and engagement in the form of in-person events or creative modalities to maintain youth interest.

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It’s been a busy year for the COMMS team! Our team division supports all of the other divisions/programs at IWES and our partners. We are excited to share some highlights with you, including our amazing film and media work, a social marketing campaign to promote healthy behavior change, and what has been happening on our social media!

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This past year has been one of growth and momentum for Puentes Para Invitados (PPI), which translates to Bridges for Guests, a project funded by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation focused on both the healing and psychosocial well-being of migrant individuals — or guests — crossing the U.S. Southern border as well as providers serving migrants in New Mexico. Click here to learn more about the growth that has taken place this last year for PPI!

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The Black Women First Care & Treatment Services (CATS) NOLA initiative, funded through HRSA’s Special Projects of National Significance (SPNS), made great strides this year to improve care and treatment coordination for Black women living with HIV (BWLH) through local patient services and provider trainings. Learn more about all the that was done through the HRSA project this year!

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This past year has been very eventful for the R&E division! We traveled abroad, led trainings on community research ethics and conducting qualitative research, supported schools with universal mental and behavioral health screenings, leveraged program data to inform and improve IWES’ adolescent sexual and reproductive health programming, and maintained research collaborations with numerous local and regional community-serving partners. Click to see our R&E highlights from the past year!

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2022 has been a busy year for the Maternal and Child Health (MCH) team at IWES! We were excited to support the the passage of House Concurrent Resolution 105 (HCR 105) that established the Louisiana Perinatal Mental Health Taskforce, and continued working with the taskforce throughout the year. Read our MCH reflections and see the four recommendations we provided to Louisiana policymakers by clicking here.

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The Collective for Healthy Communities (CHC) team is excited to share some news about our team has grown this year! Many of our team members have been promoted into new roles within the CHC team and we want to shout them out: Emily Doyle, LMSW, is now our CHC Program Manager and Meagan Dunham, LMSW, is our new Program Manager for CHC’s newest initiative, Multisystem Compassionate Caring and Healing for Black Youth [MCH-BY]. Additionally, we are thrilled to have Lydia Garrett-Metz, who started by interning with us and is now a CHC Program Associate.  Visit this blog to learn more about Emily, Meagan, and Lydia and their roles on the CHC team!

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We are excited to highlight UNO anthropology student and Hollygrove resident Ka’Sha Fenceroy, who has been selected to serve as an IWES Policy Advisory Fellow! Click to learn more about Ka’Sha and what she will be doing as a Policy Advisory Fellow!

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Our Louisiana Youth for Health Justice (LYHJ) Council has continued to grow this year, and we were excited to welcome new members for the 2022-2023 school year. Our vibrant group of young people will continue the work to be more involved in shaping policies that influence sexual and reproductive health and advocating for equitable change in social, racial, and reproductive justice for our community – and home state of Louisiana. Read on to see are newest LYHJ Councils members!

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St. John the Baptist Parish recently ended their debris pickup from Hurricane Ida, which made landfall in Louisiana on August 29th, 2021, the sixteenth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. More than a year later, places that were badly damaged by Ida are still cleaning up and in the early stages of a long rebuilding, recovery, and healing process. Now that autumn has settled in and the worst of storm season seems to have passed, it’s important to remember that while some of us are looking ahead to the holidays many people are still displaced by the last hurricane to ravage our state. Our personal health and well-being are intimately linked with the health and well-being of our communities and the collective actions that we take, but thankfully, interdependence can be a strength if we work together!

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Last year, we shared some insight into how we do community-engaged research (CEnR) here at IWES. Now we would like to share more about our Institutional Review Board (IRB), which is a large component of this work! Read more about our IRB and the important work they do with us at IWES.

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This quarter we’re sharing takeaways from the article, “Over half of known human pathogenic diseases can be aggravated by climate change,” which discusses how change to the climate due to the emission of greenhouse gases (GHG) is creating more instances and opportunities for deadly, contagious diseases worldwide. We chose this article since the COVID-19 pandemic was a sobering reality check that we cannot continue as we have. Our actions impact the environment, the climate, and each other, and if we continue to go as we have, we will also be harming ourselves. That may feel heavy, but we promise there’s some hope, so take a moment to check out the full article and start thinking about what we can do as a society to move forward.

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