Jackson Free Press

The city of Jackson will host the Independence Day Weekend First of July Celebration at the Mississippi Museum of Art's Art Garden (380 S. Lamar St.) at 6 p.m., Wednesday, July 1.

The highlight of the event is a performance by the United States Air Force West Band. Formed in 1941, the group is the Air Force's premier musical organization.

The Cade Chapel Voices of Love, a choir group from Cade Chapel (1000 W. Ridgeway St.), will also perform. The event is free and open to the public. Attendees are encouraged to bring their own blankets and chairs. Local food trucks will be selling food and drink at the event. In the event of rain, the celebration will relocate to Thalia Mara Hall (255 E. Pascagoula St.).

"This activity and others like it strengthen the quality of life for our citizens and enhance Jackson as a true visitor destination," Rickey Thigpen, executive vice president for the Jackson Convention and Visitor's Bureau, said in a release.

Fore more information, visit the https://www.facebook.com/events/466965136807801/ First of July Celebration Facebook page.

UMMC Opens New Division of Gender, Sexuality and Health

Next month, UMMC will open the Division of Gender, Sexuality and Health, dedicated to improving the health and well-being of women and LGBT individuals through research, education, clinical practice and community outreach. Under the leadership of Department Chair Dr. Scott M. Rodgers and Division Director Dr. Kim L. Gratz, the division will train the next generation of researchers, educators and clinicians in LGBT and women's health needs.

The division consists of the LGBT Health Program and the Women's Health Program.

The mission of the former is to promote the health and wellness of LGBT individuals and address health inequities within this population. One of the primary initiatives is an LGBT specialty clinic that will provide an affirming environment for members of that community to seek culturally competent psychiatric care. The clinic will also serve as a training clinic for residents and medical students, providing evidence-based teaching to promote cultural competence in LGBT health.

Research in this program will focus on improving understanding of the physical and mental health needs of LGBT individuals, including risk and protective factors within this group in general and within the state of Mississippi in particular. UMMC also seeks to develop innovative, empirically supported behavioral interventions to decrease HIV risk and improve treatment adherence among those living with HIV/AIDS.

In addition, through a collaboration with the Mississippi State Department of Health and the Division of Infectious Diseases in the Department of Medicine at UMMC, the clinic is working to improve access to behavioral and mental health services among black men who have sex with men by aiding in the development and implementation of behavioral health screening and referral protocols for them.

The mission of the Women's Health Program is to improve understanding of women's physical and mental health, with the goal of enhancing the well-being of women across their lifespan. UMMC will support research on sex and gender differences and women's health needs to develop innovative, empirically supported interventions to promote women's mental health and mentor them in psychiatry, psychology and the health sciences.

Recent and ongoing research projects include:

• A large-scale, longitudinal, laboratory-based investigation of emotional dysregulation—poorly modulated emotional responses that do not fall within the conventionally accepted range of emotive response—as a prospective predictor of sexual re-victimization and its proximal risk factors (including substance abuse and risky sexual behaviors) in young adult women

• A laboratory-based study of the intergenerational transmission of Borderline Personality Disorder-relevant personality traits and emotion regulation capacity from mothers to infants

• A study of anxiety sensitivity in pregnancy and its impact on prenatal and postnatal outcomes

The program will also specialize in providing dialectical behavior therapy for BPD and related pathology, which are therapies that help change behavior patterns that include self-injury, risky behaviors and substance use in women. UMMC has also developed an empirically supported treatment for emotion-regulation difficulties and related risky behaviors in women with BPD and provides trainings in the provision of this treatment to clinicians in the United States and Europe.

For more information, contact Division Director Kim L. Gratz at [email protected] or call UMMC at 601-984-1000.