July 2017

Every presidential administration brings a new set of priorities. These priorities affect the communities that public health researchers seek to study and protect. In light of the current administration’s immigration policy and increasing willingness to use immigration home raids to detain undocumented immigrants, it is more important than ever to understand the effects of immigration raids, at both the individual and community level. Dr. William Lopez, a Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of Michigan, agreed to chat with me about his immigration research and to discuss some ways population health researchers can become involved. Can you tell us about your research? Sure. During the Obama era, we saw up to 400,000 deportations a year. The sheer scale of the removal–400,000 people–is incredibly important, but we cannot overlook the effects that one individual deportation can cause to individuals, families, and communities. This is largely because, contrary to what is popularly portrayed, there is no collection of undocumented individuals living alone in isolated corners of the U.S. On the contrary, undocumented immigrants are linked through marriage, work, school, commerce, church, and many other ways to individuals of all immigration statuses. These are what I call “mixed-status communities.” In my work, I look […]

Read More

Recently, UC Berkeley Professor Jason Corburn was awarded an 18-month grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for his project “Learning from Slum Upgrading for Building Healthy Communities.” Here, we interview him about his planned work. What is the goal of this project? The idea is to initiate a set of conversations between activists, researchers, and decision-makers involved in building more healthy and equitable communities. We hope to share strategies and learn from one another across the Global South and North, with the ultimate goal to reduce social and health inequities in urban communities around the world.  Participants in the project include community activists, researchers, NGOs, community-based organizations, and community residents. The goal is to have practitioners from countries in the Global South, mostly in Africa and Southeast Asia, engage in a deep conversation with healthy community activists and practitioners in low-income communities of color in the U.S, namely in East Oakland and Richmond, California. This is just a starting point. The idea is not to rush to find one best practice, but to develop a new global network of practice  – of action –  that supports health equity. How do you plan to implement these ideas? The first task […]

Read More