Very recently, St. John the Baptist Parish ended their debris pickup from Hurricane Ida. Ida made landfall in Louisiana on a day New Orleanians will never forget – August 29th, 2021, the sixteenth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. More than a year later, places that were badly damaged by Ida are still cleaning up and in the early stages of a long rebuilding, recovery, and healing process. Now that autumn has settled in and the worst of storm season seems to have passed, it’s important to remember that while some of us are looking ahead to the holidays many people are still displaced by the last hurricane to ravage our state. A piece in Nature Climate Change reminds us we are in a time where climate hazards are affecting all aspects of our lives; not only in our corner of the world but all over the globe. Extreme weather and greenhouse gases impact diseases and pandemics and have measurable effects on health. Our personal health and well-being are intimately linked with the health and well-being of our communities and the collective actions that we take. Therefore, interdependence can be a strength if we work together!

Building the connections between people to affect community-led change is the foundation of IWES’ vision, programs, advocacy, and research.

This quarter highlights our Community Institutional Review Board (IRB), which is made up of community leaders, representatives from local organizations, and academics in the New Orleans area who support community-engaged research. IWES collaborators from all over the country submit research proposals for ethical review to the Community IRB, which upholds standards of federal compliance and community equity. IWES has an amazing group of Board members that work with us to ensure that proposals intentionally prioritize community needs and the highest standards of research ethics. Community voices and experiences should drive change, and the IRB amplifies these principles through research approval processes to bring community voices into the room. IWES is excited to share this work by offering a series of trainings to build a movement for cross-sector community-engaged research.

Fall is the season of harvest, and we have a lot to celebrate this quarter, including new national partnerships and prestigious awards from the Committee on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse (CADA) for Greater New Orleans and the World Social Marketing Conference, where our Communications Team presented about the intersection of Jungian archetypes and social marketing, as displayed by the use of our film New Nickels to help us think through audience segmentation for future social marketing campaigns focused on Black women living with HIV. Our Media & Communications staff not only got to represent IWES in Brighton, England, but they’ve also been busy putting the last touches on a brand new film, Evergreen, which will premiere on November 8 at 5:30pm at the New Orleans Jazz Market as an official selection of the 2022 New Orleans Film Festival. We hope to see you there and we hope to find other ways we can work together and practice interdependence!

Letter from the Editor written by Lisa Richardson, PhD, IWES Chief Impact Officer