Tamara Leech
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Women's Information and Support Exchange (WISE) across Generations was a direct result of an ISDH-sponsored Community Conversation on Adolescent Pregnancy and Parenting conducted on August 5 - August 6, 2011. These large-scale community conversations brought sixty community members from the Indianapolis Mapleton-Fall Creek neighborhood together in focus groups and conversations to safely and openly address taboo issues and share experiences related to teen pregnancy. Analyses of conversation data revealed that community members were more likely to draw informal, rather than formal, sources of support, specifically networks of women-mothers, grandmothers, aunts, and family friends-who fulfill the needs related to the well-being of teen mothers, teen fathers, and their children. In response, the research team collaborated with participants who wanted to develop a new program to design and implement the WISE across Generations program. WISE formalizes relationships between mature women and adolescents through an intentional program of reciprocal communication. A pilot program was implemented in the community and evaluated using a pre-test/post-test design with comparison in outcomes across levels of participation. Results indicate that the program may be an important resource for younger adolescent mothers from very low income families, which represents both a high-risk population for undesirable parenting outcomes and difficult to reach populations. WISE effectively translated academic and community knowledge to meet pressing public needs. Findings from the program support extended implementation of the program in specific, low-income neighborhoods.
Dr. Leech's works to access the impact of a grassroots program on teen mothers demonstrates how IUPUI's faculty members are TRANSLATING their RESEARCH INTO PRACTICE.