1:50 p.m., Nov. 30, 2010----A partnership involving University of Delaware researchers and community agencies is one of 16 recipients nationwide of a federal grant designed to find ways of improving health care for women.

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The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office on Women's Health allocated a total of $1.6 million for the first phase of the initiative, with $100,000 awarded to Brandywine Counseling and Community Services (BCCS) in Wilmington, Del. The nonprofit agency will use the grant to support research by Chrysanthi Leon, assistant professor of sociology and criminal justice at UD, into the healthcare needs of women in Delaware who are engaged in prostitution.

Leon, whose current research interests focus on sex crime and punishment and on the justice system and individuals with mental illness, said her research team hopes to interview as diverse a group as possible to learn the types of healthcare services that are lacking for prostitutes and other sex workers. Among those they plan to interview are healthcare providers, counselors, police officers, judges and the women themselves, whom they expect to find through the courts and in meetings they will hold at churches and community agencies.

“We hope to get 30 women to participate and to ask them very open-ended questions so that we don't let our own assumptions shape what we learn,” Leon said. “We want to know what resources they could use that don't currently exist or that they don't have access to.” She noted that BCCS has been working with women engaged in prostitution since 2003 and has an active outreach program to assist them.

Also contributing its services to the project is Stand Up for What's Right and Just (SURJ), a nonprofit criminal-justice reform advocacy group. Joanna Champney, executive director of SURJ and a 2005 UD graduate, said the organization is interested in “offering public health solutions to individuals in the criminal justice system,” as is done in diversion programs that offer treatment instead of prison time to certain drug offenders.

“This grant will allow the project team to explore ways in which prostitution and sex work can be addressed in a similar way -- by offering resources and treatment rather than, or in addition to, criminal sanctions,” Champney said.

Reports from the research are to be completed in May, and Leon said she hopes to then use the information collected to devise a specific plan for improving women's health and apply for the second phase of the grant to implement that plan.

Brandywine Counseling and Community Services, which was incorporated as an agency in 1985, provides care to individuals and families living with addiction, mental illness and HIV. More than 2,000 Delaware adults are enrolled in a BCCS treatment program at seven sites statewide, the agency said.

The Office on Women's Health, established in 1991, coordinates federal agencies' initiatives and programs focused on improving the health of women and girls in the United States.

Article by Ann Manser