OBJECTIVE(S): The overall goal of W4W is to build community capacity to relieve the burden of depression within historically under-served and predominantly minority communities, primarily in South Los Angeles. Another goal of W4W is the process of building community and academic capacity through a community participatory partnership research (CPPR) approach developed by HAAF, Drew University, and Project EXPORT.

METHODS: There are three working groups that are part of W4W and are governed by the Wellness Council. The council used several features of the HAAF model for partnership to facilitate group development. The workgroups, Building Wellness, Supporting Wellness, and Talking Wellness, are comprised of both researchers and community members and is co-chaired by a community and academic member. Each workgroup chose its own research projects. All the activities of each workgroup are chosen collaboratively from planning to execution to evaluation and analysis. Building Wellness develops outreach strategies to improve access to quality care. Supporting Wellness advocates for policy change for improved depression care. Talking Wellness works to decrease stigma around depression.

FINDINGS/RESULTS: Building Wellness is piloting a project to test the feasibility of implementing an online toolkit the group developed for non-mental health professionals to provide depression screening, education, and referrals for treatment. Supporting Wellness created a questionnaire that was collected at the African Marketplace. Talking Wellness supported a Spoken Word/Poetry event at the Pan African Film Festival, where they also collected answers to a questionnaire that had been developed by the group. A subgroup met separately to analyze the data and reported the results to the community earlier this year in a community forum. Supporting Wellness is developing a PSA about depression and has represented the community at stakeholder meetings to determine the allocation of Proposition 63 moneys for mental health spending in Los Angeles. Each of the workgroups of W4W was featured in its own article in Ethnicity & Disease, 2006, 16(S1).

STATUS: Each of the workgroups continues to meet monthly and work on their individual projects. Building Wellness is piloting a project that evaluates the feasibility of a toolkit to improve screening, education, and referrals for depression in non-mental health settings. Supporting Wellness is creating a PSA on depression and is participating in Proposition 63 stakeholder meetings to give feedback on how funds from the proposition should be spent. Talking Wellness recently organized their own retreat and is analyzing data collected in the form of questionnaires from the Report Back at the Pan African Film Festival.
IMPACT: This project has given the community the opportunity to work with researchers and to design its own research projects from conception through data analysis. This project has allowed community leaders to emerge and develop; has increased community trust with UCLA; has created a model for implementing CBPR in the South Los Angeles community; and increased awareness around community needs as well as increased capacity of both community and academic members to partner with each other. Its work has been featured in a series of articles in the journal, Ethnicity & Disease.

Principal Investigators:
Loretta Jones, MA; Kenneth Wells, MD, MPH

Sponsored by:
Healthy African American Families and University of California, Los Angeles