Emory's Jane Fonda Center Receives Grant for Building Healthy Teen Relationships Program

The Jane Fonda Center at Emory University has been selected to receive up to a $1 million grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation aimed at reducing the nation’s unacceptable level of intimate partner violence through early prevention.

The Jane Fonda Center is one of 11 organizations in the United States receiving funding for the “Start Strong: Building Healthy Teen Relationships” four-year initiative aimed at middle school youth.

The Jane Fonda Center will collaborate with local partners, including the Teen Services Program at Grady Health System and Atlanta Public Schools (APS). The target population for the project is the nearly 10,000 students in the 6th, 7th and 8th grade in the APS. Its student population is 86 percent African American and 75 percent low income, and includes the 1,500 youth who visit the Teen Services Program at Grady annually. The initiative, which has been named locally the “Celebration” initiative, will also target parents, teachers, community groups and other teen influencers.

“Interpersonal relationship skills are not automatic; they are learned,” says Dr. Melissa Kottke, assistant professor of gynecology and obstetrics at Emory University School of Medicine and director of the Jane Fonda Center. “Our goal is to educate youth about healthy relationships in age and developmentally appropriate ways.

“By highlighting positive qualities such as self-respect and respect for others, along with effective communication skills and personal responsibility, we hope to foster an environment where teenage dating violence and abuse is not practiced and is not accepted,” says Kottke.

Kottke is the principal investigator of the national initiative at Emory.

As the nation’s largest philanthropy devoted exclusively to improving the health and health care for all Americans, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is working to discover new public health models that can not only reduce intimate partner violence among teens through intervention, but can change the attitudes and behaviors that transform social norms about intimate partner violence overall.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and its California partner, Blue Shield of California Foundation, are investing $18 million to prevent teen dating violence and abuse. With 11 sites from around the country, the “Start Strong: Building Healthy Teen Relationships” initiative will enable communities to create and evaluate comprehensive models of prevention for this serious public health issue.

“Intimate partner violence is one of our nation’s most serious public health problems,” says Dr. James Marks, senior vice president and director, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Group. “It is well past time we looked at prevention. The Jane Fonda Center at Emory is a leader in taking steps to building a coalition to end intimate partner violence. We congratulate them in their successful grant application and are eager to see the impact they and our other grantees will make for families in their communities.”

The local “Celebration” initiative includes implementing a skill-building education program for middle school students to help them better understand and manage their sexual feelings and behaviors in healthy positive ways. The project will engage older teens as educators and role models for this population. Other teen influencers such as parents, health care providers, and teachers will receive intimate partner violence training at the Jane Fonda Center and at other agencies in Atlanta.

Through partnerships with Fulton County Department of Health and Wellness, the Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, healthy relationship education will also be taught to at-risk youth and to youth who are no longer in school due to pregnancy or delinquency.

“We are honored to have been selected for this nationwide initiative,” says Marie E. Mitchell, director of programs at the Jane Fonda Center. “By working to increase positive messaging to targeted youth, reaching youth in diverse settings, and training teen mentors, teachers and parents, this community program will discourage cultural acceptance of intimate partner violence and provide the next generation of youth with a skill set to build relationships free from physical, sexual and emotional violence.”

An independent research group will conduct a national evaluation of “Start Strong: Building Healthy Teen Relationships” that will run concurrently with the program. This national evaluation team will work closely with the Family Violence Prevention Fund, one of the nation's leading organizations working to prevent domestic and sexual violence, to identify best practices from each community partnership and evaluate the program’s impact and effectiveness.

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Household Health Largely Immune to National Economic Shocks, Study Finds

GFP Note: This is an interesting find. There is another article out today which suggests that Americans' sense of well being correlates with the rise and fall of the price of gasoline. Price goes up, wellbeing drops and vice versa. You can check out the other article on the Fayette Front Page under the Fayette Fitness and Health Blog.

When a national financial crisis strikes, ordinary citizens are adept at mitigating its effects on their health and long-term well-being by adapting their household spending, according to a study by researchers at the Motu Economic and Public Policy Research institute in New Zealand and Duke University.

The study, “Nutritional Status during an Economic Crisis: Evidence from Russia,” was published online Tuesday, Aug. 19, 2008, in The Economic Journal. The findings have implications for how governments and international donors respond to large-scale shocks, such as financial crises, said the study’s authors, Steven Stillman, a senior fellow at Motu Research, and Duncan Thomas, a Duke economics professor.

“If there is a major economic crisis, policymakers are under pressure to respond. The appropriate immediate response is not necessarily to blanket the entire country with resources, be it income or subsidized food, but to target resources to those people who need them the most,” Stillman said. “Apparently, the average person is able to do quite well in the face of economic shocks that are relatively short-lived.”

In their study, Stillman and Thomas examine patterns of spending and food consumption among Russians between 1996 and 2000 using population-based data on about 18,000 people interviewed in the Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey. From 1996 to 1998, economic turmoil sent average Russian household incomes plummeting 40 percent; incomes more than fully rebounded by 2000.

The researchers found that while household spending on food declined then rose in line with income, the average family’s intake of calories changed little during the four years. Families accomplished this by relying more on lower-cost, higher-calorie foods during economically difficult times.

“Quantities of starches and dairy are essentially unchanged across the entire sample period. In contrast, fruit and vegetables consumption appears to have adjusted entirely (to income variation) in terms of quantities,” the researchers explained in their paper. “In the case of meat, however, the picture is more nuanced: expenditures declined throughout the 1990s with a large decline in 1998; in 2000, expenditures rose but remained below their level in the mid-1990s.”

The study also looked at adult weight and child height as indicators of nutrition, and found that they changed little in response to income variation.

“Overall, the evidence suggests that individuals and households are very resilient -- even in the face of major economic upheavals -- and that they optimize over many dimensions of well-being,” the study concludes.

“The kind of household adaptability we find in the emerging economy of Russia could be applied to more advanced (nations) and to developing nations as well,” Thomas said. “We would expect American households to make similar lifestyle changes in response to rising gas and food prices and we have seen similar responses to the Asian economic crisis by Indonesian families.”

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Cancer Wellness at Piedmont’s Programs and Services for June

Cancer Wellness at Piedmont’s Programs and Services for June
Comprehensive Complementary Services Offered to Anyone Affected by Cancer

Cancer Wellness at Piedmont Hospital offers comprehensive services and programs for anyone affected by cancer at any phase in his or her journey. Classes offered every month include: Cancer Wellfit©, Gentle Yoga, Art Therapy, Guided Imagery and Relaxation for Optimal Health, Mindfulness Training 101 & 102, Breast Cancer Support, Gynecological Cancer Support, and A Guy’s Group For more information please visit www.piedmontcancerconnection.org or to make a reservation for one of the classes listed below, call Carolyn Helmer at 404-605-1962, and please indicate which classes you plan to attend.

Cancer Wellness at Piedmont Hospital events for June:
· Food for Life Nutrition and Cooking Class Series for Cancer Prevention and Survival (offered by The Cancer Project)- Fridays in June, 12:30 to 2:30 p.m.
· Understanding Acupuncture- Learn what it is and how it works. Thursday, June 19, 1 to 3 p.m.
· Poetry Reading and Reception in the Wellness Café- Bring poems or favorites written by others to share and enjoy. Friday, June 27, 5 to 7 p.m.

For more information and a full list of classes please visit www.piedmontcancerconnection.org.