We build our programs on research. We cite our sources. And we hold ourselves accountable to outcomes, not just attendance.
Sources & timeframe: National public-health datasets covering U.S. populations, 2021–2024. Figures drawn from the National Survey on Drug Use & Health (NSDUH 2021), Mental Health America's 2023 State of Mental Health report, the University of Michigan School of Public Health (2024), and the California Black Women's Health Project (most recent published data). Each citation appears beneath the corresponding metric.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services confirms that creative arts serve as powerful health interventions for Black Americans — strengthening coping skills and fostering healing from racial trauma. A music-based mindfulness intervention tailored to Black and African Americans showed measurable promise in reducing race-based anxiety.
Expressive arts therapy is documented as especially effective for Black individuals navigating systemic barriers to traditional mental health care. When traditional systems fail communities, creative practice fills the gap — as a culturally resonant primary intervention, not a workaround.
HHS Office of Minority Health, 2024 · Clark University Expressive Arts Study · University of Michigan MSUToday, 2024Black American suicide rates increased 58% between 2011 and 2021, with suicide becoming the third leading cause of death for Black Americans ages 15–24 by 2020. The mental health crisis facing Black adolescent girls is inseparable from the adultification bias, school push-out, and systemic trauma they face daily.
Black girls are suspended at six times the rate of white girls and face adultification bias — being treated as older and less innocent than their peers — as early as age five. These are not isolated facts. They are a system our programs exist to interrupt.
CDC · University of Michigan SPH, 2024 · Georgetown Law Center on Poverty and InequalityIn 2024, 47.9 million people lived in food-insecure households, including 14.1 million children. Single-parent households — disproportionately headed by Black and Brown women — face the highest rates. Research consistently shows hunger impairs cognitive function, emotional regulation, and academic performance.
This is why we feed our participants at every session. A real meal is not a perk. It is a prerequisite for the work.
USDA/ERS Household Food Security Report, December 2025 · FRAC Food Research & Action Center, 2026Research from the California Black Women's Health Project documents that mental health resources in the Black community are both limited and overtaxed. The absence of culturally responsive, safe community spaces is itself a public health crisis — one that community-based organizations are best positioned to address.
Sister circles, peer accountability structures, and healing-centered communal spaces reduce isolation, increase help-seeking behavior, and build the kind of trust that clinical settings cannot manufacture. Community is not supplemental. It is the intervention.
California Black Women's Health Project · Black Women's Mental Health Institute"When Black, Brown, and Indigenous women are gathered intentionally — resourced, held, and affirmed — something extraordinary happens. Not just to the individual. To the family. To the community. To the ecosystem around them."Black Girl Assembly
We do not measure these girls and women against deficit-based benchmarks designed for someone else's standard. We measure what actually matters — and we are transparent about what we find.
Every cohort completes pre and post self-assessments. Facilitators document observations by participant, by name. Families complete surveys six weeks after program completion. Every alumna receives a six-month check-in. Their answers shape how the work evolves.
We also refuse to perform impact for investor consumption. What we report matches what we observe. If the work is not working, we will say so first.
Self-reported and facilitator-observed outcomes across our 2018–2025 cohorts. Numbers reflect participants who completed pre/post assessments (n=812 girls, n=604 women).