To explore a potential project, HAAF set up a series of meetings over 3 months, involving many of the established community-based organizational partners of HAAF, community members and consumers, academic partners, and increased representation of the Los Angeles County Departments of Health and Mental Health.   

Wellness Council: These initial meetings led to the formation of a Wellness Council, to support the program's development. The Wellness Council represents major stakeholders in community health, especially in the South Los Angeles area, representatives of the academic institutions involved in the project, and community members. The Council reviewed view on depression and treatment and considered approaches to obtain and share community and academic views on whether and how to approach dealing with depression in the community. One of the first activities of the Council was to develop the Collaborative Partnership Agreement following HAAF principles.  

The Council continues with ongoing monthly meetings, and provides oversight of the project; sponsors conferences for community on depression and building wellness; provides resources for working groups and activities within the project; and supports research. The co-Chairs of the Council are Loretta Jones and Kenneth Wells.  

The Council has an executive committee constiting of project leaders from HAAF, Drew, UCLA, and RAND. The chair of the executive committee is Keith Norris.  

The research support group is the Research and Evaluation Committee, co-led by Ricky Bluthenthal and Paul Koegel, and includes representatives of HAAF, the academic institutions, and community members.  The research council develops an overall evaluation of the project and supports the research evaluation of activities and products, including those developed in the working groups.  

Community Conferences: The first community conference for this project was hosted by Project EXPORT/Charles Drew University for the Wellness Council in July 2003. At this conference, located at the Los Angeles County Science Museum, community, clinical, and research leaders provided information to participants about depression and its impact on individuals and the community, treatments, and barriers to treatment, and approaches to improve services delivery. In the second half of the conference, community members broke into small groups to discuss how the community viewed depression, bariers to treatment, and approaches in the community to improve services or care or build community strength. Those conversations were recorded by "scribes" who are trained notetakers that document the process of the project. | See video clip of conference  

Over 500 community members attended this conference, completed pre and post conference surveys and participated in the break-out discussion groups. | Get survey results  

Based on this conference, a strong degree of enthusiam was expressed by community for proceeding with a plan to address depression in the community.  Much valuable feedback was obtained for ways to approach this.  

The conference was followed by a planning meeting attended by about 75 attendees of the conference. This meeting led to the formation of three primary working groups for the project:

Talking Wellness: This group develops plans to improve the community's ability to safely talk about depression and to reduce stigma concerning depression and its treatment, while building new community strength and reducing environmental stressors that may increase depression.  

Building Wellness: This group develops outreach strategies and supports for improved quality of care for depression within the community.  

Supporting Wellness: This group develops policy strategies to achieve the support for the project goals, and advocacy strategies to protect the need of vulnerable populations within the project, such as children and the elderly, or those with HIV or substance abuse.  

Leadership: The leadership of each working group parallels that of the Wellness Council, and includes 2 community co-chairs and one or two academic co-chairs. This helps assure attention to evidence basis and evaluation while remaining true to community perspectives and tying the project to the goals and priorities of the community.  

Action Plans: Each working group has met at least monthly since January, 2004. Their focus has been to develop Action Plans, that include goals, methodology, and a timeline for activities to accomplish the mission of the group.   

Community Feedback: Each working group presented preliminary action plans at a community conference in March 2004, attended by about 60 community members. A modified Delphi process, a method of arriving at group consensus, was used to achieve community ratings of the plan and obtain feedback through discussion.   

Final Community Feedback: In July 2004, one year after the initial community conference, the final action plans for each working group were presented at the Magic Johnson theatres to community members. About 200 community members participated and voted on action plans through use of computerized, hand-held voting devices.  

Next Steps: Each working group will continue meeting monthly to develop toolkits and products and strategies to be used in the community. Products will be pilot tested for feasibility and cultural and community appropriateness. This phase will be followed by implementation plans, and we are planning research evaluations for each of these phases.  

Examples of toolkits and products currently being developed and piloted include: 1) a W4W website, including depression resources for community case workers to screen for depression and receive assistance with referral strategies and providing client education about depression and depression treatment; 2) poetry readings and other media-based presentations within the community, around the themes of depression and community wellness; 3) a community pictures project, that supports community members to take pictures of their environment and to support graphic redesign to stimulate community thinking about improving and building strength within the environment; 4) preliminary exploration of options to improve access to basic mental health services within the community.

Discussions between HAAF, Project EXPORT Center and the UCLA/RAND Center led to a preliminary testing by HAAF staff of the community's interest in addressing the problem of depression. The initial feedback was that this seemed to be an important, if largely unspoken, priority.

To explore a potential project, HAAF set up a series of meetings over 3 months, involving many of the established community-based organizational partners of HAAF, community members and consumers, academic partners, and increased representation of the Los Angeles County Departments of Health and Mental Health. 

These initial meetings led to the formation of a Wellness Council, to support the program's development. The Wellness Council represents major stakeholders in community health, especially in the South Los Angeles area, representatives of the academic institutions involved in the project, and community members. The Council reviewed view on depression and treatment and considered approaches to obtain and share community and academic views on whether and how to approach dealing with depression in the community. One of the first activities of the Council was to develop the Collaborative Partnership Agreement following HAAF principles.

The Council continues with ongoing monthly meetings, and provides oversight of the project; sponsors conferences for community on depression and building wellness; provides resources for working groups and activities within the project; and supports research. The co-Chairs of the Council are Loretta Jones and Kenneth Wells.  

The Council has an executive committee constiting of project leaders from HAAF, Drew, UCLA, and RAND. The chair of the executive committee is Keith Norris.  

The research support group is the Research and Evaluation Committee, co-led by Ricky Bluthenthal and Paul Koegel, and includes representatives of HAAF, the academic institutions, and community members. The research council develops an overall evaluation of the project and supports the research evaluation of activities and products, including those developed in the working groups. 

The first community conference for this project was hosted by Project EXPORT/Charles Drew University for the Wellness Council in July 2003. At this conference, located at the Los Angeles County Science Museum, community, clinical, and research leaders provided information to participants about depression and its impact on individuals and the community, treatments, and barriers to treatment, and approaches to improve services delivery. In the second half of the conference, community members broke into small groups to discuss how the community viewed depression, bariers to treatment, and approaches in the community to improve services or care or build community strength. Those conversations were recorded by "scribes" who are trained notetakers that document the process of the project.  

Over 500 community members attended this conference, completed pre and post conference surveys and participated in the break-out discussion groups.  

Based on this conference, a strong degree of enthusiam was expressed by the community for proceeding with a plan to address depression in the community. Much valuable feedback was obtained for ways to approach this.

The conference was followed by a planning meeting attended by about 75 attendees of the conference. This meeting led to the formation of three primary working groups for the project:

Talking Wellness: This group develops plans to improve the community's ability to safely talk about depression and to reduce stigma concerning depression and its treatment, while building new community strength and reducing environmental stressors that may increase depression.  

Building Wellness: This group develops outreach strategies and supports for improved quality of care for depression within the community.  

Supporting Wellness: This group develops policy strategies to achieve the support for the project goals, and advocacy strategies to protect the need of vulnerable populations within the project, such as children and the elderly, or those with HIV or substance abuse.  

Leadership: The leadership of each working group parallels that of the Wellness Council, and includes 2 community co-chairs and one or two academic co-chairs. This helps assure attention to evidence basis and evaluation while remaining true to community perspectives and tying the project to the goals and priorities of the community.  

Action Plans: Each working group has met at least monthly since January, 2004. Their focus has been to develop Action Plans that include goals, methodology, and a timeline for activities to accomplish the mission of the group.

Each working group presented preliminary action plans at a community conference in March 2004, attended by about 60 community members. A modified Delphi process, a method of arriving at group consensus, was used to achieve community ratings of the plan and obtain feedback through discussion.

In July 2004, one year after the initial community conference, the final action plans for each working group were presented at the Magic Johnson theatres to community members. About 200 community members participated and voted on action plans through use of computerized, hand-held voting devices.

Each working group will continue meeting monthly to develop toolkits and products and strategies to be used in the community. Products will be pilot tested for feasibility and cultural and community appropriateness. This phase will be followed by implementation plans, and we are planning research evaluations for each of these phases.  

Examples of toolkits and products currently being developed and piloted include: 1) a W4W website, including depression resources for community case workers to screen for depression and receive assistance with referral strategies and providing client education about depression and depression treatment; 2) poetry readings and other media-based presentations within the community, around the themes of depression and community wellness; 3) a community pictures project, that supports community members to take pictures of their environment and to support graphic redesign to stimulate community thinking about improving and building strength within the environment; 4) preliminary exploration of options to improve access to basic mental health services within the community.