$5.45 Million Allocated to New Projects in 2011

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Local Funding Partnerships (LFP) joins the resources of a national foundation with local grantmakers and nonprofit organizations, so better health can take root in our communities. Together we support ambitious new community solutions that meet people where health starts—not just in hospitals or clinics, but where they live, learn, work and play.

Congratulations to these innovative community organizations and coalitions. We look forward to partnering with you and your local funders.

Peaceful Pathways - awards announced in September 2011.

Pathways to Productive Citizenship
Caldwell, NJ

• $200,000 to The Bridge, Inc.
• Funding Partners: The Nicholson Foundation

Juvenile offenders on probation or parole reenter the community with multiple referrals to education, family counseling, substance abuse treatment, mental health care, gang intervention and other services. But an effective reentry requires a collaborative team approach, community and family involvement, sustained client follow-up and effective coordination across participating agencies. Using an evidence-based approach, this new community reentry team will work with the youth and his/her family and probation or parole officer to tailor services to assure that the individualized plan for each youth is completed. Learn More >

Engaging Men: A Culturally Specific Domestic Violence Prevention Program for Latino immigrants
Albuquerque, NM

• $200,000 to Enlace Comunitario
• Funding Partners: New Mexico Community Foundation, Encuentro

In this grassroots, community-based initiative, a Latina women’s social justice organization will approach Latino men as allies rather than adversaries in reducing and preventing domestic violence. The campaign emphasizes cultural strengths to persuade men to speak out against domestic violence among their peers. The strategy includes building leadership capacity to create a cadre of men committed to mobilizing their social groups to reframe the Latino concept of machismo and work to end intergenerational violence. Additional outcomes include the development of a culturally specific violence-prevention media campaign. Learn More >

Community Alliance Against Violence
Brooklyn, NY

• $200,000 to The Center for Anti-Violence Education
• Funding Partners: Stonewall Community Foundation, New York Community Trust

Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) youth face disproportionate rates of interpersonal violence, bias crime and street harassment. In partnership with five LGBT youth organizations, this project trains service providers and LGBT young people to break through shame, fear and isolation to reduce violence in their lives and communities. Using role plays, discussions and physical activities, participants will learn de-escalation and anger-management techniques, develop physical skills and negotiation strategies for self-protection, identify healthy and abusive behaviors in relationships, and learn how to access support and create a safety plan. Learn More >

Promotora Bar Outreach Project
Jackson Heights, NY

• $195,000 to Voces Latinas Corp.
• Funding Partners: New York Women's Foundation

Some immigrant Latina women are driven by fear, threats and financial dependence to engage in sex work despite the high risk of violence and HIV/AIDS. To reach sex workers posing as waitresses along La Avenida (The Avenue––Roosevelt Avenue in Western Queens, NY), Voces Latinas focuses on converting bar and restaurant managers into project partners. Then peer advocates, promotoras, connect women to culturally and linguistically appropriate services to bridge their isolation, provide life-saving sex education and condoms, improve their health and help address urgent issues that prevent them from living safer lives. Learn More >

REMAP 'Reinventing Manhood Project'
New York, NY

• $164,548 to CONNECT, Inc.
• Funding Partners: 21st Century Foundation, Lily Auchincloss Foundation, Inc., New York Women's Foundation

Using the step-by-step process of creating video games, such as “character development” and the “social rules” that lead to violence, high-risk young men of color will work with a game developer as an original way to examine gender roles and masculinity. Urban youth at an alternative school will learn how to change the rules to affect the outcome of the story or change the scenario to reveal new rules that offer alternatives to violence. The project leverages the teens’ passion for video gaming, helps them make better decisions, teaches career skills and provides parent and teacher workshops, mentoring, leadership and youth development opportunities. Learn More >

STANCE Police Assisted Referrals (PAR)
Cleveland, OH

• $200,000 to Partnership For A Safer Cleveland
• Funding Partners: The Cleveland Foundation, Saint Luke's Foundation of Cleveland, Ohio, Sisters of Charity Foundation

In Cleveland’s public housing neighborhoods, the police are usually the first responders to interact with youths who have been victims or perpetrators of violence. This Police Assisted Referral program supplies the officers with training and resources to immediately link distressed children and families who have experienced violence to health and social services—including education, mental health screening and treatment. The program is designed to strengthen the trust between police and public housing residents and connect youths and their families to services that prevent violence and build resiliency. Learn More >

 

LFP Annual Grantmaking - awards announced in July 2011.

Sisters on the Rise Initiative
San Francisco, CA

• $425,000 to The Center for Young Women's Development
• Funding Partners: van Loben Sels/RembeRock Foundation, Isabel Allende Foundation, Spark

Using a gender-responsive approach to help young women involved in the juvenile justice system, Sisters on the Rise provides comprehensive mental health assessment and treatment, long-term case management, and an array of educational support services to help girls succeed in higher education and post secondary programs. Programs designed for incarcerated boys prevail, despite the growing presence of young women entering the juvenile justice system or entering juvenile detention facilities. This separate track of services for young women will develop evidence-based research on the effectiveness of a new gender-responsive framework. Learn More >

GENESISTER/Women's Health Collaborative
Boulder, CO

• $500,000 to Boulder County Public Health
• Funding Partners: The Community Foundation of Boulder County, Rose Community Foundation, Temple Hoyne Buell Foundation, Virginia W. Hill Foundation

An adolescent girl is 2-6 times more likely to become pregnant if her sister is a teenage mother. Research suggests that sisters of parenting teens may also have earlier onset of sexual activity, drug and alcohol use and problems in school. GENESISTER takes an innovative, holistic approach to reducing adolescent pregnancy by addressing the influence and impact of having a parenting sister on the younger sibling. Bilingual, bicultural staff offers case management, social/educational groups and comprehensive sexuality education; while the girls' parents participate in group classes about reproductive health and child/parent communications. Learn More >

Kristi House's Project GOLD
Miami, FL

• $500,000 to Kristi House, Inc.
  
• Funding Partners: Women’s Fund of Miami-Dade County, Allegany Franciscan Ministries, Inc., Health Foundation of South Florida, Paul Palank Memorial Foundation, The Ware Foundation

Spotlighting the commercial sexual exploitation of children––specifically the victimization of girls 11-18 being bought and sold in the U.S. commercial sex industry, Project GOLD will open a voluntary emergency shelter and drop-in center with extensive case management and physical and mental health services to help girls escape from their traffickers. In addition to providing the young women with a holistic network of intervention and rehabilitation services and linkages to longer term housing, the program will continue training and working closely with first responders to better recognize and understand sex trafficking and to see the girls as crime victims rather than perpetrators. Learn More >

PATHH Collaboration (Providing Access Toward Hope and Healing)
Chicago, IL

• $500,000 to Chicago Children's Advocacy Center
• Funding Partners: Lloyd A. Fry Foundation, The Chicago Community Trust, Polk Bros. Foundation, Ravenswood Health Care Foundation

This innovative initiative aims to substantially improve Chicago’s mental health treatment system for victims of child sexual abuse.  The new referral and triage program offers a potential national model to reduce long waiting lists abused children face for mental health care. The multi-agency project effectively and efficiently links victims to their needed level of service as soon as possible and offers families and children the opportunity to join psychoeducational groups that will serve as an intermediary intervention. The evaluation will show if more timely care, additional therapists and psychoeducational groups can lead to better outcomes. Learn More >

Creating a Frontier Mental Health Tipping Point
Garden City, KS

• $346,598 to Area Mental Health Center
  
• Funding Partners: United Methodist Health Ministry Fund

In the frontier area of west central Kansas where the population averages three people per square mile, distance and limited resources create barriers to obtaining mental health services. This program employs “circuit riding” therapists in two counties to help develop the mental health infrastructure and increase clinical services via telepsychiatry. They will work closely with newly established Local Advisory Councils who will help tailor each rural community’s approach to promote screening, increase referrals and reduce the stigma residents may associate with behavioral health care. The initiative will also engage the growing Hispanic population. Learn More >

IMPACT:Ability
Boston, MA

• $500,000 to Triangle, Inc.
• Funding Partners: The Carl and Ruth Shapiro Family Foundation, The Clarks Companies, North America

People with physical and intellectual disabilities are at increased risk for emotional, physical and sexual abuse from multiple sources. Working with the Boston Public Schools and the state Department of Developmental Disabilities, this program gives direct service providers the skills to recognize and respond to abuse while concurrently equipping people with disabilities to advocate for themselves and protect their own safety. The curriculum uses scenario-based safety training to teach participants to communicate assertively, protect themselves from imminent assault and resist the isolating behaviors often used by perpetrators of sexual abuse. Learn More >

Serving Together: Troops, Veterans and Family Care Project
Silver Springs, MD

• $500,000 to Mental Health Association of Montgomery County MD. Inc.
  
• Funding Partners: The Clark Charitable Foundation, Healthcare Initiative Foundation, The HSC Foundation, Mead Family Foundation, Montgomery County Government, Stanford and Doris Slavin Foundation

To improve health and wellbeing for U.S. troops, veterans and their families, this project promotes a common referral system between military, veteran and community-based programs. A web-based map with links to the full range of civilian resources in Montgomery County, MD will be cross-referenced with military and veterans programs to expedite access to health, housing, education, financial and other services. Outreach and training will foster interagency collaboration to bridge gaps in care. Evaluation results with real time recommendations to key state and federal policymakers will facilitate systems change. Learn More >

Sew Up the Safety Net for Women and Children
Detroit, MI

• $300,000 to Henry Ford Health System
  
• Funding Partners: The Kresge Foundation, Detroit Medical Center – Children’s Hospital of Michigan, Henry Ford Health System, Oakwood Healthcare System, University of Michigan Office of Public Health Practice

In a joint effort to address social determinants of health that lead to poor pregnancy outcomes, competing health systems in Detroit will employ participatory research, small area analysis and outreach workers. They will focus on three neighborhoods where existing supportive services are underused and local funders have invested in multi-service neighborhood centers and community development. Women 18–35 will be linked to resources including education, employment, housing, nutrition, pre-natal care, and family planning classes. Training 500 health providers to recognize and address health inequities and racial disparities will promote Institutional change. Learn More >

United Family Behavioral Health Center for Military Veterans and Their Families
Great Neck, NY

• $300,000 to North Shore LIJ Health System
• Funding Partners: The Fay J. Lindner Foundation, Berlin Family Foundation, Randi and Mark Jacobson Charitable Foundation

When a veteran returns from Iraq or Afghanistan, often with post-traumatic stress disorder or brain injury, the Veterans Administration provides behavioral health care to the service person but not to his/her family. Now a VA medical center and a regional hospital network will co-locate behavioral health services to integrate therapy and community referrals for the military family. Collaborating across systems, mental health professionals can also stabilize potentially volatile situations with rapid assessment, medications and social services and then transition the veteran, spouse or child into convenient, affordable local care. Learn More >

The Career Support Network
Philadelphia, PA

• $425,893 to Federation of Neighborhood Centers
• Funding Partners: Job Opportunity Investment Network (JOIN), Independence Foundation, Thomas Scattergood Behavioral Health Foundation

The Federation of Neighborhood Centers, Thomas Jefferson University Hospital’s Center for Urban Health and a public-private workforce development network will focus on the health causes of chronic unemployment. Two neighborhood centers in South Philadelphia will integrate physical and behavioral health screenings and care into its onsite job readiness and training programs. The effort will engage participants over a three-year period helping them remain in their jobs and linked to crucial health and supportive wraparound services.  A citywide funding collaborative is highly invested. Learn More >