The TREE-funded pilot study, “Designing a Group Navigation Model for Latina Women” has been underway for almost a year. In one of their early community advisory council meetings, the name Abriendo Mis Alas (Opening our Wings) was chosen for the project. Guadalupe Fuentes, a community health worker, and Julia Meredith Hess, an anthropologist at UNM’s Prevention Research Center, were brought together by Janet Page-Reeves in a collaboration that involves Ms. Fuentes, UNM researchers, and staff from Centro Sávila, a clinic serving low income immigrants and others in Albuquerque’s South Valley. Ms. Fuentes conceptualized the project after many years working as a community health educator working with Spanish-speaking clients, the majority of whom are from Mexico. While she found that they were easily able to talk about chronic physical health conditions, it was more difficult to talk about mental and emotional health concerns. Ms. Fuentes developed a class that would educate participants on depression, anxiety and panic attacks, in a way that built on cultural values, individual and community strengths, as well as recognition that the current sociocultural, political and economic context. Classes were held with two cohorts of participants in the Fall of 2018 and in the Spring of 2019. Dr. Hess and UNM student Annette Carreon collected mixed method data from 21 participants. Preliminary results demonstrate the importance of group interventions, class facilitation by a community member, addressing participants’ explanatory models of mental and emotional health, and information on accessing resources. Participants underlined the importance of recognizing Latina women’s strength, past difficulties, cultural values and constraints, and current lived experience. In addition, participants benefited from concepts that describe their mental and emotional health, as accessing appropriate resources for themselves and others. The project ends in June, 2019, and the team is considering long-term research and program implementation strategies. - Submitted by: Julia Hess, PhD.