VW10 - Empowering Families and Individuals to be Leaders in their Community.

LEAD focuses on maternal, paternal, and children’s health/mental health by providing leadership training, education, and community engagement for families to prevent Intellectual Developmental Disabilities. This multipronged initiative addresses health inequities by enhancing community engagement and leadership opportunities for diverse families. The session will address social determinants of health (poverty, language barriers, ACEs, societal and environmental stress management, self-care tools, work-life balance, access to service systems, immigration, language barriers) and others that influence issues such as smoking, substance use, and nutrition. proposes to build community capacity to enhance engagement in leadership opportunities to increase awareness of preventable I/DDs for families and individuals of childbearing age