Thursday, April 18, 2024
4/18/2024
YMCA of Greater Louisville is one of the most well respected Y associations nationwide, well known for innovation and culturally relevant teen programs and approaches to health interventions. The areas shown by data as the greatest risk for teen pregnancy, STIs, and risky sexual behaviors are no secrets here in Louisville, Kentucky. These areas are commonly known for concentrated populations of socioeconomically disadvantaged youth and families clustered in segregated areas of African American, White and Immigrant poverty. Louisville’s equity gaps for wealth, education, and health are staggering in contrast between our well-resourced east Louisville residents and our low-income west Louisville residents. The YMCA is determined to change this map. It was easy to pick an effective TPP program that fit our YMCA Community Health goals. The Dibble Institute’s Love Notes 3.0 EBP has been proven effective by our University of Louisville partner here in Louisville and is being implemented in other Tier 1 grant communities. This grant will expose 1,750+ youth yearly to this curriculum delivered in schools and the community with replicated prevention results. Alone this would be worthy, but this initiative will also be developing a supplemental Love Notes Parent Training and Love Notes Peer Educator Training. For the first time nationally, we will provide supplemental training to parents and use trained Love Notes Peer Facilitators to help us deliver the curriculum. Our Teen Pregnancy Prevention approach, infused with Love Notes, has multiple linkages and tackles pregnancy prevention in the context of healthy relationships, healthy actions, and equitable health in our community. The YMCA Love Notes Initiative will be facilitated in and through our brand new Community Integrated Health YMCA that sits in the epicenter of Louisville’s poor health outcomes. We have combined the best of our Y teen programs, cross departmental leaders, membership assets, leadership development, with the best suited community partners to change the map for teen pregnancy. Our brand new YMCA with our Norton Healthcare Clinic and Best Buy Teen Tech Center partners will support this work from Youth Focused Healthcare and Healthy Actions to Leadership Development and Media Production for our Community Awareness Campaign. YMCA membership alone has been the commonly used youth health strategy in most YMCA branches across the country. Our goal over the last five years has been to prove that this alone (simply access to the Y) is not in itself an effective strategy to increase healthy youth outcomes; and that a purposeful youth engagement strategy, community education and recruitment, and targeted health program interventions must be a part of our membership Y branches locally and nationally. This grant will give us the momentum to be innovative and grow our teen outreach to more low-income families and reshape how we engage the youth that have typically not been interested in a YMCA wellness or youth sports experience. We want to foster a desire in all youth to be more active and to learn, practice, and maintain lifelong healthy behaviors, nutrition and activity. This OASH, Tier 1 grant allows us to target our longstanding YMCA teen programs and area schools serving our highest risk teens with proven curriculum, multiple community linages, and purposeful and integrated YMCA memberships and access as part of their prevention and health goals. A YMCA must be a part of this OPA Teen Pregnancy Prevention and will be able to provide valuable connections with local Y’s to all of the nationally funded Tier 1 programs and share and scale proven successful practices throughout the YMCA, academia, and National Safe Place Network RHY programs.
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).
