As we near the SDOH & Place Symposium, here is the lineup of presentations for the two-day event! Can’t attend in-person? Be sure to check out our YouTube channel where we will be livestreaming each session!

Day 1: Friday, June 14th

3:00 PM: “Space, Place, and Food Justice: “Engaged GIS” for Community Service Opportunities of Healthier Food Access in Areas Experiencing Social Inequities”
Speaker: Babu Gounder

Urban inequities create food deserts where neighborhoods face barriers to accessing food and healthy produce. Access to nutritious foods is a health determinant for adverse conditions, including obesity and diabetes. Adverse health disproportionately affects marginalized communities, creating an imperative for community services to address food injustice. This research adds to the literature documenting racial minoritized and low-income neighborhoods experience less access to supermarkets by analyzing open-source geospatial datasets of socioeconomic characteristics and healthier urban agriculture options in Chicago, one of the largest racially segregated cities in the US. Utilizing critical theoretical frameworks and geographic information science (GIS) methodologies, the research investigates how space – spatial distribution of urban agriculture – and place – neighborhood socioeconomic health determinants – influence access and inform opportunities for food justice. Findings demonstrate spatial patterns of inequitable access to farmers’ markets and produce carts in southern neighborhoods – areas characteristic of unemployment, lower incomes, and larger populations with disabilities and of minority races. Uniquely though, southern communities are resourced with some urban farms, representing possibilities for improved access. This paper discusses social service implications by presenting results as practical “engaged GIS” tools with community maps for 1) distributing healthy food locations to strengthen resident health promotion and food assistance programs and 2) contextualizing socioeconomic inequities to support advocacy for food justice.

3:20 PM: “Data leadership academy: powerful data-driven community-centered storytelling”
Speaker: Margarita Reina

I created the Data Academy in 2021, when I was asked to provide data capacity training to our newly selected Healthy Chicago Equity Zone (HCEZ) partners we funded for COVID-19 vaccine equity. I trained 25 community leaders to prioritize their region with HCEZ community leads, as each of the 6 regions prepared a presentation at the end of the academy to city leaders. Each community-centered solution prioritized a public health priority and created a research question with data indicators to support the issue. We utilized the Chicago Health Atlas as the text book to find appropriate data. In addition, the fellows presented key policy recommendations and ultimately a community-centered solution to the priority public health issue in their neighborhood. It was an amazing way to build capacity to impacted communities and have community leaders co-design solutions.

3:50 PM: “Examining the spatial risk environment of bloodborne infections - Viral Hepatitis and HIV”
Speaker: Jacob Gazimba

The landscape of Hepatitis C (HCV) infections in the United States has shifted demographically, with a growing prevalence among young adults attributed to unsafe injection drug use (IDU), surpassing rates among baby boomers in many states. This trend underscores the evolving dynamics of HCV transmission, intertwined with IDU, and the heightened risk of transmitting other bloodborne infections such as HIV within networks of people who inject drugs (PWID). Understanding the nuanced interplay of the spatial risk environment entailing socio-economic, policy, and physical factors is crucial for identifying areas vulnerable to these infections and informing targeted interventions in national efforts to eliminate HCV and contain HIV transmission. This talk will focus on how machine learning (ML) and spatial epidemiological methodologies could be leveraged to identify area-level factors associated with HCV infection serving as proxies for IDU-associated transmission and develop a predictive model for local vulnerability to HCV and HIV related to IDU. By developing a vulnerability predictive model, tailored public health strategies can be effectively implemented at smaller geographic scales to achieve micro-elimination goals. The proposed ML approach offers advantages over conventional methods, effectively handling non-linear and complex interactions between predictor variables, and holds promise in guiding resource allocation and intervention prioritization in jurisdictions with limited surveillance data on bloodborne infections associated with injection drug use.

4:10 PM: “Rethinking the benefits and potential risks of urban agriculture in the city of San Diego, CA: From Environmental Justice to Lead Contamination in Gardens”
Speaker: Aneika Perez

Urban green spaces, such as community gardens, have been promoted by government agencies, nonprofit organizations, private developers, public health officials, and social justice organizations because these spaces are often viewed as solutions to social, economic, and ecological problems. However, the provision of green space in cities is highly uneven, with race and socio-economic status playing a key role in determining who has access to these green spaces. The benefits of green spaces in low-income minority neighborhoods might be exaggerated to the extent that these open spaces may be unsafe if there is soil contamination (such as lead) and pose a risk to human health. This paper addresses equity concerns over greening initiatives in cities by focusing on green gentrification and community gardens, relying on ongoing research in San Diego, CA. I argue that neoliberal urbanism plays a role in changing the politics of urban green spaces by limiting access and restricting uses to certain residents. While studies have looked at urban agriculture's socioeconomic and racial geographies, few have investigated its relationships to soil quality. Ultimately, this paper contributes to urban geography planning by examining the consequences of placing green spaces near congested and polluted areas.

Day 2: Saturday, June 15th

9:00 AM: Keynote by Malaika Simmons: "Human Centered Design (HCD) and the SDOH Project"

Malaika Simmons is the Chief Operating Officer for NADPH, a data-driven nonprofit health research organization. She uses her background in research, psychology, and design thinking to promote empathy-based leadership with over 20 years of experience in corporate policy, training, and program management, operating at the convergence of health research, IT, and consumer issues.

Malaika has a strong commitment to improving the health of underserved populations and more broadly supports these efforts through her organization Momentology Media, LLC. Malaika fulfills her passion for the elimination of economic and health disparities in minoritized communities by using her proprietary framework, The Momentology Method™, an intentional framework for living that she uses to empower women to own businesses, champion public health causes, and enter the corporate and political landscapes to affect change in their corner of the world.

At Momentology Media she promotes Human-Centered Design principles to provide thought leadership, motivational speaking, empathy-based corporate training & executive coaching services helping people and teams increase performance and productivity through insight and impact.

Following the Keynote, we will showcase the SDOH & Place Fellow Projects.

10 AM: Fellowship Session- Story Map Group

11:15 AM: Fellowship Session- Asset Map Group

1:30 PM: Fellowship Session- Data Dashboard Group

2:00 PM: Environmental Justice in Chicago with Instituto Progresso Latino

We will conclude with a talk by a local environmental group, "Instituto Progresso Latino." This talk will be a bilingual presentation given in both Spanish and English. In this talk students will be showcasing the work done through the ChiVes website.

Come see the symposium talks live at our YouTube: go.illinois.edu/HEROPLive.