From 1990 to 1993, she was director of Child & Adolescent Service at Riverside General Hospital, leading The Children’s Renaissance Center and providing curriculum-based substance abuse prevention training and support for children, youth, and agencies serving youth. Sheila leads the Movember Foundation-funded Making Connections for Mental Health and Wellbeing initiative, which works in diverse settings across the United States to identify and amplify community approaches to improve mental wellbeing outcomes for boys and men–with projects advancing solutions for boys and men of color and service members and veterans–all taking a community-driven, primary-prevention approach.Īs an African-American storyteller and writer, Sheila has always been passionate about finding creative ways to promote health and healing within contexts of cultural, ethnic, and economic diversity.
Her projects take a public health approach to mental wellbeing and improving community environments–social connection, the built environment, and equitable opportunity-and aim to prevent and/or address mental health problems, trauma, substance misuse, and violence. In her leadership role on mental health, she focuses on its intersection with community resilience and the community determinants of health. Based in Houston, Sheila provides leadership on health equity, mental health and wellbeing, and violence prevention. Sheila joined the Prevention Institute as a director in 2015, where her work has focused on building local assets for multisector systems transformation. In my work with mental health and substance abuse, a lot of what I did leveraged creative arts as part of catalytic healing and community building.” “My mother was an artist, and my father was a research chemist, so I’ve always approached things through discovery and expression. In 2009, she was a children’s mental health panelist for Vice President Al Gore’s Conference on Families and Health, and in 2014 she was a CDC Grand Rounds Panelist on Preventing Youth Violence. Sheila serves on the FRIENDS National Advisory Council on Community-based Child Abuse Prevention and previously served as an expert advisor for several bodies including the Center for Health Care Strategies Committee on Consumer Advancement, Harris County Regional Advisory Council on Medicaid Managed Care, and the Texas Commission on Alcohol and Drug Abuse Multicultural Advisory Committee. She is widely recognized for her contributions in the areas of health equity, mental health, capacity building, and therapeutic programming with children, adolescents, families, and communities. Sheila Savannah has over thirty years of experience in multisector collaboration and youth/family engagement to address wellness, safety, and equity. More importantly, our work is about identifying champions and equipping them to change their environments to those of equitable opportunity.” “Our work at Prevention Institute recognizes that historical trauma and the systematic nature of detrimental policies and practices generate disparities, at an individual and community level, with a disproportionate impact on people of color and communities that experience persistent disinvestment. Sheila Savannah, Managing Director Email: Sheila_at_preventioninstitute_dot_org
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