The Urgency of SDOH Data: Increasing Access w/ Human-Centered Data Science

Join us for lunch, learning, and conversation at the next installment of the HEROP Speaker Series on Thursday, Feb. 6th at 12:30 PM CDT. Lunch will be served from 12-12:30p, so please join in person a bit early to eat & mingle!

The Healthy Regions & Policies Lab, U of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Friday, Feb. 6th @ Noon, via Zoom
& In-Person at NHB 2049 in Urbana, IL

Accessing data about the social, economic, political, and environmental factors that make up U.S. neighborhoods and regions is more important than ever. Past research shows that inequalities persisting across these factors may explain more than half of variation in many health outcomes. To advance resilient and healthy communities, we need resilient and community-centered technological infrastructures that make SDOH data easily accessible, findable, and contextualized. We propose an engaged, human-centered approach to gathering and accessing data about SDOH and Place using design thinking, intelligient search tools, and spatial data science infrastructure. The HeRoP team demonstrates their development behind a forthcoming, free, open-source SDOH & Place Data Discovery Platform, developed with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Presenters

Marynia Kolak, PhD

Kolak is a health geographer / spatial epidemiologist integrating a socio-ecological view of health, spatial data science, and a human-centered design approach to investigate regional and neighborhood health equity. Kolak is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Geography & GIScience at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, serves as an editor for multiple journals, and is a proud member of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee at the Society for Epidemiological Research. They are also the Vice Chair at the Health & Medical Geography Specialty Group at the American Association of Geographers.

Adam Cox, MLIS

Adam is a geospatial developer with a background in geographic information systems and archaeology, and a passion for open source software. Originally from southwestern Wisconsin, he lives in New Orleans, Louisiana. Adam leads engineering and infrastructure development at HEROP, supporting projects like the US Covid Atlas, OEPS, ChiVes, and the SDOH Place Project, as well as facilitating open source collaboration with our partners and adjacent community projects like GeoBlacklight. He also manages a crowdsourcing project, OldInsuranceMaps.net, which allows citizens and institutions to georeference historical maps, creating opportunities for historical research as well as community engagement.

Pengyin Shan, MBA

Pengyin is a passionate programmer with multiple years of full-stack expertise, serving large higher-education institutions. She is based out of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, a leader in advanced computing, software, data, networking, and visualization resources. Her main focus is to develop accessible web applications to virtualize and utilize unstructured, complex, and multilingual datasets. She has a B.S. in Computer Science Engineering and an M.B.A. degree.

Shubham Kumar, MSIM

Shubham is a Product Designer at HEROP with a passion for collaborating with diverse teams to achieve design goals. Prior to his role at the lab, Shubham was improving accessibility in education with the Board of Trustees at the University of Illinois. He has a master’s degree in Information Management from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a bachelor’s degree in Information Science from PES University. In his leisure time, Shubham volunteers as a Product Lead at Greenstand, a non-profit addressing poverty and climate change through technology. He also loves going out for bike rides, recognizing the benefits it brings to both his well-being and the Earth.

In-person or Virtual?

The in-person option is open the University of Illinois community (students, staff, and faculty). Please use the RSVP option on the right for the in-person portion of the event. We will have lunch for all attendees who RSVP by Tuesday @10a before the event.

A virtual option via Zoom is available for the public. To register for the Zoom option, please access the following link: go.illinois.edu/HEROP-ZOOM-FEB6.

About the Series

The HEROP Speaker Series connects scholars, experts, and innovative thinkers to discuss different conceptual, methodological, and technological facets of public health to better understand the social determinants of health, and how place may influence outcomes. The Healthy Regions & Policies (HEROP) Lab integrates innovative GIScience, public health, and statistical approaches to explore, understand, and promote healthy places. We’re experts in the spatial & social determinants of health. We’re based out of the Dept of Geography & GIScience at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.