About

Mission

The mission of the Southern Mississippi Rural Women’s Health Collaborative is to increase and enhance the availability and accessibility of education and training on domestic violence, intimate partner violence, sexual assault, and stalking to providers of rural victims through a trauma-informed lens. The SMRWHC seeks to address the prevention of violence against women in some of Mississippi’s most southern and underserved rural communities by enhancing the current service delivery system through education, training, and outreach efforts.

The focus of this project is to enhance Jones County’s current collaborative coordinated systems. These systems include the domestic violence shelter, rape crisis center, law enforcement, and other service providers. By establishing these coordinated efforts in the seven rural communities around Jones County, the SMRWHC is more able to serve the victims in these rural areas of Mississippi.

The Southern Mississippi Rural Women’s Health Collaborative serves eight deep-south Mississippi counties, all located in the southern portion of the state. These counties include Smith, Jasper, Jefferson Davis, Covington Jones, Wayne, Marion, and Greene County.

The Southern Mississippi Rural Women’s Health Collaborative works with health care facilities and staff, law enforcement personnel, and other social service providers. These partnerships assist in bringing offenders to justice and ensuring that victims are provided with the needed referrals and resources to help them heal and become whole.

The SMRWHC consists of the primary partners in the Mississippi Domestic Violence Coalition, the Mississippi Coalition Against Sexual Assault, and the Clean Slate Behavioral Health Solutions. The SMRWHC also includes local domestic violence and sexual assault programs and their MOU partners of the community health centers that cover the eight target counties.

Funding

Funds for SMRWHC address two of the mandated OVW purpose areas, which are:

1. To identify, assess, and appropriately respond to domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking, and human trafficking in rural communities.
The SMRWHC accomplishes this goal by encouraging collaboration among service providers, law enforcement agencies, prosecutors, courts, individual and community service providers, educational institutions, and health care providers – including sexual assault forensic examinations.

2. To increase the safety and well-being of women and children in rural communities.
The SMRWHC deals directly and immediately with domestic violence, sexual assault, dating violence, and stalking occurring in rural communities. The SMRWHC has created and implemented strategies to increase awareness and prevent domestic violence, sexual assault, dating violence, and stalking.