New Orleans Hope
Leadership Training, New Orleans Hope, July 2008
Current Status:
- 82 health professionals trained in mind-body medicine
- 42 received advanced training
- 21 completed leadership training July 2008
- 20 received specialized training in working with children & adolescents
- 15+ ongoing Mind-Body Skills Groups being led for New Orleans residents, including children
- Monthly Mind-Body Skills groups being held for trained health professionals to support their healing
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According to the August 2, 2006 Journal of the American Medical Association, “Half a million U.S. residents in areas devastated by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita may still need mental health assistance, but they’re unlikely to get it.” The Center has developed a project to help—New Orleans Hope, a powerfully effective self-care program that can be thoughtfully and thoroughly integrated into existing health, mental health, social service, and educational systems in New Orleans and surrounding parishes.
The Center has held 5 mind-body medicine trainings to date in New Orleans: 2 introductory, one advanced, one leadership training and one specialized training in working with children and adolescents. In addition, the Center has held a one-day retreat workshop for nurses, and has provided on-going support to the health professionals trained in our programs.
Trained professionals have included physicians, psychologists, teachers, school nurses, social workers, and emergency medical technicians. What makes this population so different: they themselves lived through the trauma and are still trying to heal. The Center’s model is uniquely effective because it supports those who are providing services, even as it equips them to provide those same effective services to the entire community.
The Center is honored to bring our global trauma relief home—and it’s starting to make a difference.
Partners & Program Highlights
Ongoing mind-body skills groups currently being led by Center-trained health professionals and the communities they serve include:
- Claudia Medina, MD, MHA, MPH at FACES Children’s Hospital - HIV positive women
- Antor Ndep, MPH and Anne Mulle, NP, Common Ground – extremely underserved populations in Algiers
- Heidi Huber, FNP, NP-C, Tulane University & Covenant House - homeless & transient populations, including adolescents
- Madeleine Uddo, PhD and Michelle Hamilton, PhD, Southeast Louisiana Veterans Healthcare System – Vietnam era veterans
- Under the leadership of Assistant Vice President Joe Eppling, RN, a team at East Jefferson General Hospital are holding groups for over-stressed staff members & community populations. 50 participants; 6 groups in the last 4 months; EJGH Team includes Brenda Aranda, LCSW; Claudia Johnson, RN; Jeanne Cunningham, MSW, MFA; Donna Roubal, BA; and Leo Muralles, BS
- Catherine Lasperches, FNP, under the auspices of Louisiana State University (LSU) - the New Orleans Musicians’ Clinic
- Toni Bankston, LCSW and Heidi Sinclair, MD have led the team with the Baton Rouge Children’s Health Project’s mobile medical unit, which worked in FEMA’s Renaissance Village, and continues to travel to schools in the greater Baton Rouge area. They will begin a series of six groups with school children in the next few months.
- Jose Calderon-Abbo, MD in the Department of Psychiatry at LSU has opened the Mindful Living Program, which will start its second round of groups this in August; he is helping to spearhead the direction of our program in New Orleans; and is actively reaching out to potential partners participants in the program.
Additional partners have included New Orleans Public Health Department, Agenda for Children and Reach NOLA.
“Mind Body Skills groups have provided an invaluable addition to our PTSD treatment program. We found that the skills learned in the group helped group members feel more connected to others, less angry, more self aware, calmer, more hopeful, and more accepting of others. The group skills appear to have an impact on decreasing hyperarousal symptoms, which typically are among the most common and most disruptive symptoms reported by veterans with PTSD. We feel that Mind Body Skills groups will be more appealing to veterans of recent deployments ( Iraq and Afghanistan veterans) than traditional psychotherapy.”
Madeleine Uddo, PhD and Michelle Hamilton, PhD
Southeast Louisiana Veterans Healthcare System
Join us in helping a community in need to heal itself.
Donate funds to help a New Orleans health professional attenda future training:
click here
Read about our other Global Trauma Relief Programs: click here
You can have life- changing experiences like the birth of
a child, getting married, and buying your first home. Going through The Center for Mind-Body Medicine’s Professional Training Program in Berkeley, California was such an experience for me.
- Robert Chadborn, Chief, Emergency Medical Services, East Jefferson General Hospital, New Orleans, Louisiana
We are in full support of your efforts to bring your model of stress management to New Orleans’ health care providers.
- Kevin Stephens, Sr., MD, JD, Director of New Orleans Department of Health
© 2008 The Center for Mind-Body Medicine