Neighborhoods and Health Lab

National Institute On Minority Health And Health Disparities

Investigators

Linked publications, trials & patents

Abstract

In FY2021 we worked to establish this research program for productive scientific research in future years. This included staffing the research area, developing the proposed research program, and establishing collaborations across and outside of NIH. We hired one Research Fellow who began in January 2021; recruited two post-doctoral fellows who will begin in Fall 2022; and launched a search for a staff scientist, although a suitable candidate has not yet been identified. Objective 1. Regarding Objective 1, developing and testing frameworks, methods and measures for environmental research in health disparity communities, we have worked to develop a primary data collection project to go into the field in FY2022, pending pandemic-related feasibility. We have made progress towards establishing a protocol, and initial efforts toward procuring instrumentation for this work. Given the pandemic, we are pursuing secondary analyses to advance our research in the interim. Objective 2. Related to Objective 2, mentoring to increase the diversity of the biomedical workforce, we hosted an undergraduate summer intern (Kwaniyah Tuffour) in Summer 2021, providing her invaluable real-world research experience. The research program also includes a research fellow (Kelly Jones) and two post-doctoral fellows (Lauren Reid, Xiao Shi) will begin in Fall 2021. All are women, and two of these four trainees are from underrepresented minority groups (i.e., African American). We also mentored an NINR post-baccalaureate fellow (Kayla Keane) on a study on food security during the pandemic, which was presented at the NIH Postbac Poster Day 2021. Objective 3. Regarding Objective 3, developing strong collaborations across and beyond NIH, we have begun collaborating on projects throughout NIH and the region. With a group consisting of Drs. David Berrigan and Kim Clevenger of NCI and Dr. Craig Pollack of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (JHSPH), we are evaluating neighborhood conditions and resulting asthma-related outcomes for children enrolled in the Mobility Asthma Project (MAP), jointly run by JHSPH and the Baltimore Housing Authority. Over the summer of 2021 we conducted in-person audits of over 80 schoolyards, and are developing neighborhood and school-yard based measures. Our work is being tracked by the MAP team and their community advisory board, and we have two initial manuscripts planned following data analysis. We expect to grow more sophisticated research questions out of this new collaboration and the results of this preliminary environmental study. Additionally, the research program has initiated collaboration with the Dr. Anna Napoles research program to assess neighborhood environments and health behaviors in the COVID-19s Unequal Racial Burden (CURB) survey cohort, as well as provide support and expertise to investigators seeking to include neighborhood measures in other CURB analyses. We also constructed comprehensive neighborhood measures for a project assessing associations between neighborhoods, racism, stress, and preterm birth in African American women being conducted by Dr. Carmen Giurgescu at the University of Central Florida.