Last spring, Jennifer Hebert-Beirne, PhD, MPH, at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s (UIC) School of Public Health hosted a community event in Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood to share information on community health findings that would build toward health and social policy recommendations in that specific community. Gathering citizens, community workers, professors, and students, Hebert-Beirne’s event, “Neighborhood and Health: Identifying Community Health Priorities,” was an opportunity to think about and discuss current community health challenges in Little Village and, as a group, dialog about how the community can continue to grow its current health initiatives, as well as initiate new ones.
The information presented at the neighborhood event derived from a team-based community health assessment that involved Hebert-Beirne and her graduate students. Profiling Little Village—in part because of its immigrant population, but also because of its roots in strong community organizing—the research team was interested in exploring the immigrant experience as it relates to community health, considering the influence of the social determinants of health on Little Village community health and health equity. (Social determinates of health refers to the conditions in which people are born, live, work, and mature and describes how the distribution of resources and power shapes these circumstances.) The team handed out surveys, conducted interviews, and held focus groups in the community to gain a comprehensive understanding of Little Village health in regard to six major health topic areas: adolescent health, violence prevention, healthy moms & babies, healthy homes, obesity, and access to care.
In order to disseminate the wealth of information gathered from their research, Hebert-Beirne and her team organized a community event divided into three forums scheduled to take place across April and May this past year. The Community Health Pláticas were planned for different days, times, and locations (library, park district, church) in order to accommodate wide-spread participation. Click to view the Prezi used at the forums.
Hebert-Beirne is a recipient of UIC’s Institute for Policy and Civic Engagement’s (IPCE) Discourse Award for her Community Health Pláticas. She has put together a short video documenting her discourse event and its affiliated graduate community health assessment class.