Prevention Institute (PI) looks forward to seeing colleagues new and old at the upcoming American Public Health Association (APHA) Annual Meeting in Denver. We’d especially like to invite you to our Making Connections for Wellbeing reception, co-hosted with the Movember Foundation, on October 31. The Making Connections initiative focuses on improving the mental health and wellbeing of men and boys, especially males of color and veterans. Featured speakers at the reception will be Paul Villanti, Executive Director of Programs, Movember Foundation; Sheila Savannah, Making Connections lead and director at PI; and Larry Cohen, PI founder and executive director. The reception will include a kickoff for the annual November mustache campaign to raise awareness for men’s health, with partners from several of our 16 Making Connections sites on hand to talk about their work.
Making Connections for Mental Wellbeing Reception
Monday, October 31st, 6:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.
Mile High Ballroom 2A, Denver Convention Center
You can learn more about our Making Connections initiative at our special session earlier in the day, moderated by Sheila and featuring our community partners in Denver, the state of Nebraska and Tacoma, Washington. The panel will discuss reducing stigma around mental health for young men and boys; maximizing resilience among veterans and their families; and mobilizing the community to address trauma and inequity. The session, Making Connections Among Men and Boys: Understanding and Addressing Adverse Community Experiences and Resilience is Monday, October 31, from 2:30 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.
** We will post room numbers for all sessions on the Events section of our website as soon as the information is available. **
PI also has organized a special panel presentation as part of its Cradle to Community: A Focus on Community Safety project, an initiative funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The project is identifying strategic policy, practice, systems, and norms-change levers to promote safe communities and optimal development for young children. The panel will feature representatives from PI’s UNITY City Network of violence prevention practitioners, and from the EC LINC Network of early childhood systems builders, convened by the Center for the Study of Social Policy. PI Managing Director Rachel Davis will present on Addressing the Links among Multiple Forms of Violence: A Focus on Safety from Cradle to Community, as part of the Cradle to Community: Connecting the Dots Among Multiple Forms of Violence session on Sunday, October 30th, 10:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
We hope you will join PI Founder and Executive Director Larry Cohen as he signs copies of his upcoming book, Prevention Diaries. The book features anecdotes and first-person accounts to show the unexpected elements of daily life that affect health, and how prevention can improve wellbeing for all. The book signing will take place Sunday, October 30th, 3:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. in the Exhibit Hall at Booth 1800, APHA Press/Everything APHA. You can also find information about the book and other Prevention Institute work at our booth #1326 in the exhibit hall.
In addition, you can connect with Larry at his talk on Innovations to Reduce Chronic Disease and Injury: Improving Environments through Policy & System Changes, which is part of the invited SOPHE session, CDC 6/18 Initiative: Making the Case for Health Education Specialists as an Integral Component of Value-Based Care. Larry speaks Monday, October 31st, 8:50 a.m. - 9:10 a.m.; the full session runs from 8:30 a.m. to 10 a.m.
Rachel also will speak about Countering the Production of Health Inequity: An Emerging Systems Framework to Achieve an Equitable Culture of Health, part of a special session on Reframing Health Equity: New Opportunities for Research and Action that includes speakers from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (C. Tracey Orleans), the National Collaboration for Health Equity (Brian Smedley), Drexel University (Shiriki Kumanyika), and University of California-San Francisco (Paula Braverman). Rachel speaks Wednesday, November 2nd, 1:00 p.m. - 1:15 p.m; the full session is 12:30 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. In addition, Rachel will present on Shifting the discourse towards prevention: An analysis of community violence in California news coverage, on Wednesday, November 2nd, 8:30 a.m. - 8:45 a.m.
Anna Realini, Manager of the Executive Office, will host Prevention Institute’s Exhibit Hall Booth 1326, where she will have information on Prevention Institute and Larry Cohen’s new book, Prevention Diaries. Alexis Captanian, Senior Program Assistant, will coordinate our Making Connections reception. We look forward to seeing you in Denver, and learning from your exciting work and ideas!