UNLV’s Project Wellness gains national reputation, helps students cope with shooting

Whenever Joe Llanes hears the whines of police sirens, the UNLV student can’t stop thinking back to the helpless feeling of sheltering in place while an active shooter was terrorizing campus. Since last summer, Llanes, 20, has led UNLV’s peer-to-peer mental health group Project Wellness, which after the shooting received communication from several students looking for the on-campus resources his group was known to provide. Project Wellness helped Llanes and many others through the anguish of surviving the mass shooting, he said. The program is gaining national attention.