Neighborhoods are complex systems with spatial signals that help decode their stories. We integrate innovative GIScience, public health, and statistical approaches to explore, understand, and promote healthy places.
Research Program Themes
1.
Defining how place impacts & interacts with health
We focus on complexity surrounding the measurement, mapping, and distillation of multiple health outcomes and associated social determinants of health at varying scales, to gain a greater understanding of disease prevalence.
2.
Identifying disparities of access & health outcomes
In collaboration with clinical and public health teams, we explore the relationship of accessibility as a function of health outcomes, from food access disparities to availability of evidence-based medications for opioid use disorder.
3.
Building engaged, participatory infrastructures
We collaborate with policymakers, community members, researchers, and software engineers to brainstorm ways of integrating complex information about the natural, social, health, & built environments — using human-centered design thinking.
4.
Integrating spatial thinking in research design
Spatial effects can violate core components of the standard counterfactual framework used for evaluation, making treatment effects difficult to assess. We refine and improve methods to consider & account for spatial interactions.
Select Research Projects
Since early 2020, we’ve made spatial statistics accessible in the web browser, encouraging users to explore the pandemic from its start to today. In the latest push, we’re humanizing the data with oral histories from across the country. We also explore how regional social determinants of health impact COVID.
Place and Social-Spatial Networks
We have multiple projects exploring how neighborhood connections between people can be better understood to prioritize places, individuals, or groups for life-saving and harm-reducing health interventions.
Measuring Opioid Risk Environments
We are the geospatial core leads at the JCOIN Methodology and Advanced Analytics Resource Center, and collaborate with many other teams to measure opioid risk environments, access to medication for opioid use disorder, and implement quasi-experimental research designs to evaluate spatial impacts.
Decision Supports for Environmental Justice
A handful of key metrics―tree cover, air pollution estimates, heat island effects, traffic volumes, and social vulnerability index― help to reveal where in the city people face particular challenges. Following years of collaboration with different groups, we’re now fine-tuning ChiVes to support community efforts.
Latest News from HeRoP Lab
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Access, Time, & the Social Determinants of Health
The Health and Medical Geography Specialty Group (HMGSG) at the American Association of Geographers is thrilled to invite you to an upcoming online webinar! Join us for an hour of insightful discussion on a health geography topic of immense significance. Read more
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Building Data Equity #APHA2024
Marynia Kolak, Keon Gilbert, Erica Walker, MSc, ScD, and moderator George Hobor shared insights on building data capacity at this year’s American Public Health Association Annual Meeting, improving data accessibility, and prioritizing community voice and engagement in the data collection process. Read more
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How does location impact access to Opioid Use Disorder treatment?
Dr. Marynia Kolak, PI of the Healthy Regions & Policies Lab, will be presenting at the next Pittsburgh Medicine Health Services Seminar! Don’t miss these geospatial insights—register now to join us on Zoom this Thursday, October 24th at noon EST. Read more
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The Montgomery, Alabama Asset Map by Amy Kryston—Spring 2024 Cohort
The Montgomery, Alabama Asset Map by Amy Kryston Overview of the SDOH & Place Project FellowshipThe SDOH & Place Project is committed to advancing community health through innovative, equity-focused technology solutions. Earlier this year, fifteen fellows were invited to develop web mapping applications that prioritize community-centered design using the SDOH & Place Toolkit. We are Read more
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October Speaker Series: Participatory body mapping of postpartum experiences
Participatory body mapping of postpartum experiences Join us for lunch, learning, and conversation at the next installment of the HEROP Speaker Series on Friday, October 25th at 12 PM CDT. Coffee and networking session to follow. For folks outside of the UIUC community, please join us via Zoom! Catalina Alzate MFA, U of Illinois at Read more
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Who gets access to medications for opioid use disorder?
HeRoP Lab’s director Dr. Marynia Kolak was a co-author on two studies recently published in JAMA Open. Both examined different dimensions of access to medications for opioid use disorder, for different populations. Read more
Looking for a research experience?
We are not hiring other staff or UIUC student hourly researchers at this time. To get on the waitlist, contact us with your interest and resume.
The Healthy Regions & Policies Lab is supported in part by the following organizations.
Healthy Regions & Policies Lab 