Article archive / October 2020
Originally published: . Volume 11, No. 10. Source pages: 1, 7.
Dr. A. James Honored in NO
New Orleans Mayor Latoya Cantrell has announced that Dr. Arnold James is a member of the distinguished group of New Orleans health care professionals who have been named as Clinical Scholars by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), the nation’s largest philanthropy dedicated solely to health issues.
According to the press release, Team emPOWER NOLA, includes Dr. Maurice Sholas, Dr. Lauren Teverbaugh, Dr. Arnold James, and Licensed Master Social Worker Rhonda M. Jackson, who make up RWJF’s Cohort 5. Their proposed project is, “Training Community Leadership of Naturally Occurring Social Networks to Improve Access of Children Suffering from Trauma to Mental Health Services." This prioritizes working with New Orleans youth that have lived through profoundly traumatic events.
The cohort seeks to develop interventions that heal, and partnerships that promote, trauma-informed spaces to treat and support children living with trauma. For this effort, RWJF awarded a three-year $432,000 grant to emPOWER NOLA, to design and implement the project.
Dr. Arnold James is a native of Columbia, SC and has practiced clinical psychology in New Orleans for nearly 30 years. He received his Doctor of Philosophy in Clinical Psychology, Master of Public Health and bachelor’s in Psychology from the University of South Carolina. His training also includes post-doctoral studies in psychoanalytic psychotherapy as a fellow with the New Orleans – Birmingham Psychoanalytic Society. He is currently employed with the Southeastern Louisiana Veterans Health Care System. He is a former assistant professor of psychology at Tulane University Medical Center and previously served as a visiting professor at Davidson College (NC) under the Knight Foundation Faculty Fellowship.
According to the announcement, the New Orleans City Council called for the New Orleans Children and Youth Planning Board (CYPB) to create the Childhood Trauma Task Force to develop a comprehensive plan to reduce the occurrence and impact of trauma on children and families within the city of New Orleans.
Research conducted by the Institute of Women and Ethnic Studies as cited by a task force for the City of New Orleans, surveyed 5,000 youth between 2012 and 2018. It found a startling prevalence of youth living through severely traumatic events. One in 5 had witnessed a murder; one in 3 witnessed domestic violence; four in 10 had seen someone shot, stabbed or beaten; and, more than half had someone close to them murdered. The existing institutions to treat and support children living with trauma are fragmented. Strongly cohesive naturally occurring social networks (NOSN), that have decades of history in the various communities of Orleans Parish, serve a strong healing purpose for people historically disenfranchised from traditional mental health and social supports.
The team proposes to increase the cultural competence of New Orleans’ fragmented mental health treatment network and empower communities to be more effective at accessing resources to support their children by partnering with NOSN organizations, including social aid and pleasure clubs as well as charter school system mental health professionals. Through this approach, the emPOWER NOLA project team is poised to address the two recommendations via the ingenuity of local talent – who are culture bearers themselves – with the structure and reach of the Clinical Scholars Program.
"I want to congratulate Team emPOWER NOLA, the 2020 Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars New Orleans Cohort, on receiving this grant. When we design a New Orleans that truly puts children’s interests first, we create a New Orleans that shows love to all of her people,” said Mayor Cantrell.
The press release noted that the mission of emPOWER NOLA is to empower formal and informal community leaders, and help them gain the tools to identify children in need and suffering from community and personal traumas, and to create and promote access to culturally competent care. Improved mental health for the current generation of children is not just morally essential, it is critical to the continued existence of the rich culture of the city. We are committed to equity in the culture of health in New Orleans, because that is required to nourish the community and its many unique customs and traditions.
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars Program is a leadership opportunity for practitioners from diverse fields of health care. Interdisciplinary teams of health care providers collaborate to tackle complex health problems in their communities and build a Culture of Health nationwide.
RWJF Clinical Scholars, left to right: Dr. Lauren Teverbaugh, Dr. Maurice Sholas, Dr. Arnold James, Ms. Rhonda M. Jackson, MSW. (courtesy photo)
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