Ascensions Community Services founder receives the RWJF Community Health Leader Award

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation presents 2009 Community Health Leaders Award to Satira Streeter, Psy.D., for providing mental health care to the underserved

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) today announced its selection of Satira Streeter, Psy.D., clinical psychologist and executive director of Ascensions Community Services in the District of Columbia, to receive a Community Health Leaders Award. She is one of 10 extraordinary Americans who will receive the RWJF honor for 2009 at a ceremony this evening at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C.

Streeter is being honored for her efforts to deliver culturally relevant, family-focused psychological services to children and families living in the economically challenged Anacostia community (Wards 7 and 8) of the District of Columbia. Working without a salary for more than two years, Streeter founded Ascensions Community Services to ensure that Anacostia's children and their families would have the mental health services that they so desperately need.

Ascensions delivers free, comprehensive community mental wellness services and holistic psychological interventions to disadvantaged children and their families living in Anacostia. Streeter's service to the area goes beyond her work with Ascensions. She serves as a leader for a Girl Scout troop and as a volunteer psychologist at Moten Elementary School and at Union Temple Baptist Church, where she helps parishioners with parenting and marriage problems.

"Dr. Streeter confronts tremendous challenges to help residents of a community where gang violence, drug abuse, and domestic violence are not uncommon occurrences," said Janice Ford Griffin, national program director for the award. "She has had the courage and compassion to work with people society has ignored."

"I share this wonderful award with my fellow therapists at Ascensions and hope that this honor will bring attention to the fact that the cycles of poverty, teen pregnancy and abuse can and must be broken," said Streeter, a former foster child.

District of Columbia Council Member Yvette M. Alexander (Ward 7) described Streeter as an "active visionary" who is working to deliver needed services in the Anacostia community. "Her organization is quite literally the only one of its kind in the community, filling an enormous health care crisis," said Alexander. "Through her daily work, constant outreach on mental health issues, and dedicated advocacy on behalf of this community, Satira is actually changing the way service providers address the psychological needs for low-income children and families by employing diverse and successful approaches to mental wellness at the community-based level."