Monday, November 25, 2024
11/25/2024
Community Thriving: Enhancing Resiliency of Communities after Stress and Trauma builds on a county-wide health initiative to support child and youth thriving through deep partnerships across multiple communities that have been historically marginalized and racially segregated in Allegheny County, PA. This second most populous county in the state includes the city of Pittsburgh and has about 1.2 million residents, 79% identify as White, 13% Black, 4% Asian, 2% Hispanic/Latino; 19% are under age 18. We propose three overarching goals attuned to the unique strengths and challenges of youth and communities in Allegheny County. Goal 1: Improving care coordination and mentoring for youth injured or impacted by violence, trauma and civil unrest to promote recovery and reduce future violence involvement. Through the Empowering Teens to Thrive (ET3) intensive case management and mentoring programs, we will provide 20-40 assault-injured youth per year with safety planning, psychological support, systems navigation and linkage to mental health and social services and will provide 20-40 violence exposed and involved youth with individualized trauma-sensitive mentorship each year. We will expand implementation of an evidence-based program (Cure Violence), to directly serve 30 youths per year in prioritized geographic areas, and create and disseminate a community engagement toolkit designed to increase participation in violence prevention programming and to increase awareness and linkage to community-based mental health and social services. Goal 2: Connecting youth to racial and gender justice-informed violence prevention programs to address trauma, violence and civil unrest. Research-informed programming shown to demonstrate reductions in interpersonal violence will be delivered to 60 youth in two neighborhoods per year by trained community facilitators at community-based youth-serving agencies. We will lead trainings in trauma-sensitive practices, mental health literacy, cultural humility, racial and gender equity and anti-racism for 100 youth, parents, and adult allies across multiple sectors (social service, educational, health care, juvenile court, law enforcement, child welfare) each year. Goal 3: Promoting community change through a community-based participatory intervention that engages youth and adults to foster collective efficacy and community resilience and increase community capacity and leadership to prevent youth and community violence and improve community mental health. We will implement the 3-phase collective efficacy intervention to train 30 youth and adults in two neighborhoods per year in restorative intervention approaches to prevent violence and improve mental health outcomes and develop and disseminate a replication toolkit. Across all 5 years, we will serve 1,750 individuals (334 in Year 1, 344 in Year 2, 354 in Year 3, 359 in Year 4, and 359 in Year 5). Offering opportunity to co-create thriving environments for children and youth will provide a concrete, action-focused strategy for increasing resiliency in neighborhoods most impacted by COVID-19 and civil unrest, promoting emotional well-being, reducing mental health symptoms, and reducing youth violence.
HHS’ Tracking Accountability in Government Grants System (TAGGS) website provides access to detailed descriptions of grants, loans, aggregated direct payments and other types of financial assistance awarded by the HHS Operating Divisions (OPDIVs) and the Office of the Secretary Staff Divisions (STAFFDIVs).
