News

Awards

HeRoP Lab Graduate R. Loftus Earns Jerome D. Fellman Award

Rachel Loftus, HeRoP Lab alum, is this year’s University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign recipient of the Jerome D. Fellman Award. The award recognizes her senior thesis work on measuring the impact of public libraries across multiple community-level social determinants of health, from education to health resources, social cohesion, and more. Her work helps towards contributing new…

by metamarc24 August 11, 2026August 11, 2026

Conferencing

Call for Abstracts for 3rd Annual SDOH & Place Symposium

The SDOH & Place Symposium is a meeting for SDOH researchers, practitioners, and advocates to share their work on measuring SDOH and linking public health with geography, GIScience, and social science. The 3rd Annual SDOH & Place Symposium will be held in downtown Chicago from September 23-September 25th, 2026. The Symposium is an intentionally smaller event,…

by Marynia June 5, 2026June 12, 2026

Community

Panel Event: Conceptualizing Opioid Geographies

Wednesday, May 20, 2026,3 PM CST via Zoom Join us for a Panel & Roundtable of the Geospatial Consortium & Community of Practice, a collaboration of researchers and practitioners that meet regularly to share, discuss, and learn how geospatial methods, tools, and models can be used to build understanding and develop resources for the opioid…

by metamarc24 May 19, 2026May 19, 2026

Awards

PhD Candidate M. Gadri Earns Health Geography Award

Mandela Gadri, a member of the HEROP Lab, is the recipient of the Messina-Stanley Graduate Scholarship in Medical and Environmental Geography for the 2025–2026 academic year. Dr. Kolak notes that Mandela “consistently brings together technical skill, conceptual clarity, and practical relevance in ways that are increasingly necessary for addressing uneven access to transportation and opportunity…

by Marynia May 6, 2026May 11, 2026

Design

Making maps make sense: HEROP Speaker Series

The HEROP Speaker Series invites participants to explore “Our Bodies, Our Places, Our Stories” on March 27th at 12 PM CT. Featuring Dr. AJ Kim, the event discusses marginalized communities’ hidden health resources through qualitative spatial data. Options for in-person and virtual attendance are available, promoting dialogue on social determinants of health.

by rloftus April 9, 2026April 9, 2026

ChiVes

Understanding EJ Technospaces: A New Perspective

Check out the HEROP’s lab latest article on understanding & advancing environmental justice (EJ) technologies and technospaces, published with open, free access at Wellbeing, Space & Society.

The article reviews EJ technologies from Pellow’s view of Environmental Inequality Formation, tracing perspectives across national, state, and regional applications like EJ Screen.

We include a…

by Marynia March 29, 2026

Built Environment

Counter-mapping in Marginalized Communities: HEROP Speaker Series

by rloftus March 10, 2026March 16, 2026

Built Environment

Neural Sensing and Urban Environments: HEROP Speaker Series

Join us for the HEROP Speaker Series on February 27th at 12 PM, featuring Dr. Jiaxin Feng from Dartmouth College. She will discuss innovative GIS approaches linking human brains with urban environments, focusing on neural sensing and its implications for mental health and urban development. In-person and virtual attendance options are available.

by rloftus February 9, 2026March 16, 2026

Design

Join the SDOH & Place Design Fellowship for Public Health Innovation

The SDOH & Place Design Fellowship is a remote, project-based program sponsored by the Healthy Regions & Policies Lab (HeRoP). We are seeking a detail-oriented Product/UX Designer to support the SDOH & Place initiative, a project dedicated to making complex Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) data accessible for public health planning and community advocacy.

by rloftus February 6, 2026March 4, 2026

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