The Avalon Gardens Men’s Association: A Community Health Psychology Case Study

Abstract

This article follows the development and progress of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development's 'Healthy and Safe Communities' initiative as it was implemented by a community empowerment organization during a four-year community revitalization project in the aftermath of the Los Angeles riots. The author explores practical aspects of Community Health Psychology through assessing the ways in which its organizing principles were manifest in community-wide processes of individual and community change in one low-income housing project in South Central Los Angeles called Avalon Gardens. Specifically highlighted is how a group of African American and Latino men in the community created a group forum that helped foster, support and sustain an empowerment process that supported health promotion, health consciousness and significant health improvement in the community.

Venturing beyond the Consulting Room

“…Each of these factors was thought to be related to underlying depressive symptomatology, and each of these areas showed significant improvement (Boyd, 1998). Accordingly, the physical health of the community also improved significantly as seen on various statistical measures (Borg, 2002b). Most significantly of all, perhaps, the community service organization initiated by AGMA solidified an alliance among the groups in the community, and so provided a formalized means of sustaining the collaborative empowerment process that continued after the intervention was completed.…”

The diva is/in the organization: exploring personal/interpersonal/organizational dynamics and their enactment

“…We use the term community character to describe institutional patterns of defense. This term denotes the set of security operations that groups, communities, and organizations use to ward off anxiety and to protect their self-esteem/ security in everyday life (Borg 2002). They are processes that determine what is allowed to remain in awareness and what is blocked off -interpersonal operations that organize self-experiences during real or imagined interactions with others.…”

“…Another term we use to describe our model of organizational intervention is point of impact (Borg 2002). This is the emotional epicentre of a crisis.…”

Nurses' Tending Instinct as a Conduit for Men's Access to Mental Health Counseling

“…Recent research suggests that men and boys have an expectation of beneficent care and collaboration with their counselors and health care professionals (Borg, 2002;Smith, 2003aSmith, , 2003bSmith, , 2004. Additionally, when empowered some men demonstrate more proactive behavior about their mental and physical health care, and they become protectors of their health through the attributes of discipline, organization, and endurance (Borg, 2002). Men, however, are too varied and heterogeneous to rely on one conceptualization explaining their behavior.…”