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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Tres Años Después: An Overview
Our community plática aimed to describe how the Pandemic has uniquely affected the Latinx community, and how we can turn data into action. This community event was the first in a series of workshops co-sponsored by the US Covid Atlas, a project of the Healthy Regions & Policies Lab (HEROP). The goal of the workshops Read more
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Seeking Postdoctoral Scholar in 2023
We are seeking a Postdoctoral Scholar to work on a new project to advance health equity with improved social determinant of health (SDOH) data discovery and community practice tools for health researchers, policymakers, and community organizations. @Healthy Regions & Policies Lab @Department of Geography & GIScience @UIUC The Project The PLACE Read more
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Seeking SDOH & Geography PhD Students in 2023-2024
I’m recruiting 1 or 2 new PhD students to start in Fall 2023 who are interested in the structural determinants of health; how social and spatial networks influence health outcomes; and/or developing spatial infrastructures for advancing environmental justice applications. PhD positions are funded, with an expected ~4 years to graduation. Read more
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ChiVes Data Collaborative: Uncovering the Nature of Chicago’s Environment
Chicago’s urban environment has profound impacts on the health of communities and individuals. 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 as we work towards a healthier Chicago. With an eye toward the sustainable 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 