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US government health agencies need to move quickly to launch broad testing of people exposed to types of toxic chemicals known as PFAS to help evaluate and treat people who may suffer PFAS-related health problems, according to a report issued today.
The report recommends that the Centers for Disease and Control and Prevention advise clinicians to offer PFAS blood testing to their patients who are likely to have a history of elevated exposure to the toxins. Those test results should be reported to state public health authorities to improve PFAS exposure surveillance, according to the report, issued by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, or NASEM.
The testing should be done for people with occupational exposure, as well as those who have lived in communities with documented contamination, and those who have lived where contamination may have occurred — such as near commercial airports, military bases, wastewater treatment plants, farms where sewage sludge may have been used, or landfills or incinerators that have received waste containing PFAS, according to the report.
“Our report shows that we are going to need robust and effective collaboration between local communities, states, and federal agencies in order to respond to the challenge of PFAS exposure,” Ned Calonge, chair of the NASEM committee that authored the report, said in a statement.
'Make PFAS testing available'
“We need to continue to identify communities with elevated PFAS exposure, learn more about specific health impacts, make testing available to patients, and give clinicians more strategies for counseling patients and providing preventive medical care,” Calonge added in the press statement. Calonge is associate professor of family medicine at the University of Colorado, Denver and associate professor of epidemiology at the Colorado School of Public Health.
NASEM acts as the collective scientific national academy of the United States and its recommendations typically are highly regarded. It was created to provide independent and objective guidance that informs American policy.
The report released today is sponsored by US Department of Health and Human Services.
PFAS, the 'forever chemical'
PFAS is an acronym for a class of chemicals known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances. PFAS are also often referred to as “forever chemicals” because they do not break down in the environment and bioaccumulate, persisting in the bodies of humans and animals. There are more than 4,000 man-made PFAS compounds used by a variety of industries for such things as electronics manufacturing, oil recovery, paints, fire-fighting foams, cleaning products and non-stick cookware.
People can be exposed through contaminated drinking water, food and air, as well as contact with commercial products made with PFAS. Some PFAS have been linked to cancer, immune deficiencies, thyroid disease, and other health problems.
How PFAS enters the environment
How PFAS enters the environment
Credit: Evich et al., 2022
Last year, the US Environmental Protection Agency identified more than 120,000 locations around the United States where the agency believed people may be exposed types of PFAS. The scope of the list underscored that virtually no part of America appears free from the potential risk of air and water contamination with PFAS.
The Biden Administration has announced a series of steps to try to restrict PFAS from contaminating water, air, land, and food as well as to clean up PFAS pollution and speed up research on other PFAS issues.
Last month, the administration started the process of designating two types of PFAS – PFOA and PFOS – as hazardous substances under the law, which would allow the EPA to deploy recover clean-up costs from companies responsible for contamination and take other steps to address contamination.
NASEM said a large body of scientific literature on PFAS shows there is “sufficient evidence” of association between exposure to PFAS and increased risk of decreased antibody response in adults and children, abnormally high cholesterol in adults and children, decreased infant and fetal growth, and kidney cancer in adults.
The report found there was “limited or suggestive evidence” of increased risk of breast cancer in adults, liver enzyme alterations in adults and children, pregnancy-induced hypertension, increased risk of testicular cancer in adults, thyroid disease and dysfunction in adults, and increased risk of ulcerative colitis in adults.
The NASEM report warned that people with PFAS in their blood above 2 nanograms per milliliter (ng/mL) but below 20 ng/ml may face the potential for adverse effects, especially “sensitive populations,” such as pregnant women. Clinicians should encourage reduction of PFAS exposure for these patients and prioritize screening for a range of health problems that include hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, breast cancer, signs of kidney and testicular cancer and of ulcerative colitis, according to NASEM.
People found with PFAS in their blood at levels higher than 20 ng/ml potentially face a higher risk, the report states.
The report noted that more information is needed on how PFAS affects children and pregnant women, and recommends the gathering of data to address those groups.
Environmental justice and systemic racism
The report notes that systemic racism and issues of environmental justice could compound the “challenge of responding clinically" to PFAS contamination.
The report notes: “While environmental justice research specific to PFAS contaminants has been limited, place-based factors that may put individuals at greater risk of exposure (siting of chemical companies, refineries, and industrial sites), coupled with insufficient access to environmental screening, information, and adequate health care, have disproportionate impacts on Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous communities, as well as low-income populations.”
“PFAS contamination did not just randomly occur in rural communities serviced by well water that happened to be near industrial sites. Rather, the locating of certain industrial sites and decisions to dispose of PFAS with limited regard for the surrounding community’s access to safe water are rooted in the relationship and history of these industries and communities.
The disposal of these chemicals did not occur as single events lacking context, but reflected a pattern of decisions made over time. Understanding the historical and social context influencing how and where PFAS are distributed is an essential part of identifying effective mitigation strategies.”
This story was originally published in The New Lede, a journalism project of the Environmental Working Group, and is republished here with permission.
We've been reporting on environmental health for 20 years. But what is environmental health? You've got questions, and we have answers.
What is environmental health?
Environmental health is a branch of public health that monitors the relationship between human health and the environment, examining aspects of both our natural and man-made environment and their effect on human wellbeing.
What is an example of environmental health?
Living near factories or heavy traffic worsens air quality and leads to health impacts on the lungs and heart.
Credit: Kouji Tsuru/Unsplash
Environmental health is a broad area of study — everything from the climate to the food we eat to the air we breathe plays into environmental health. A few specific examples include:
- Air pollution: Living near factories or heavy traffic worsens air quality and leads to health impacts on the lungs and heart such as asthma and increased risk of heart attacks or stroke.
- Water contamination: Drinking lead-contaminated water can cause IQ loss, behavioral issues, learning disabilities and more. Infants and young children are most at risk.
- Toxic chemicals in consumer products: Phthalates, a class of chemicals that are widely used in consumer products, are known endocrine-disruptors, meaning they hijack your body’s hormones and can cause a wide array of health impacts including increased risk of cancer and fertility issues.
What is the role of environmental health?
The role of environmental health research is to examine areas of the environment that impact our health so that we can make personal and policy changes to keep ourselves safe and improve human health and wellbeing.
Why is environmental health important?
Credit: Viki Mohamad/Unsplash
Environmental health impacts every one of us.
We reap the benefits of clean air, clean water, and healthy soil. If our environment is unhealthy, with toxic chemicals saturating our resources and pollution abundant, then our health also suffers.
It is also an important field of study because it looks at the “unseen” influences on your health.
Many individuals may not associate their health problems with air or water quality, or with what clothes they wear, makeup and household goods they use, or food they eat.
That’s because not every example of environmental health problems are obvious: some chemicals, for example, build up slowly over time in your body: a small dose may not seem to bring harm, but repeated small doses can lead to later impacts.
- BPA absorbed through plastic containers, cans, receipts, etc. lingers in the body and the build-up over time increases risk of cancer, diabetes, liver failure, and more.
- PFAS are known as ‘forever chemicals ’— they don’t break down and are widely used, so small exposures are frequent and contribute to immune system and reproductive damages, heightened cholesterol levels, and more.
- Mercury from eating seafood and shellfish can impact neurological development of fetuses in the womb, and populations that regularly consume mercury-heavy seafood have shown mild cognitive impairment.
Also, individual susceptibility can differ: for example, one member of a household can experience illness, asthma, migraines, etc. from chemicals found in their water supply while another member of the same household is just fine, such as the case in a young girl’s reaction to benzene in her water from living near fracking wells.
Certain variables play a role in susceptibility and level of adverse health effects such as age, gender, pregnancy, and underlying health conditions. Studies suggest fetuses, infants and children are much more at risk to experience lifelong health problems from toxic chemical exposure.
Rate, duration, and frequency of exposure to toxic chemicals and other influences from our environment all factor into our health.
Good environmental health = good human health.
What environmental health problems affect our health?
Two women extracting from a well in Senegal.
Credit: JordiRamisa
There are many environmental health issues that affect human health. These include:
Air pollution — nine out of 10 people currently breathe air that exceeds the World Health Organization’s guideline limits for air pollution worldwide. This mainly affects people in low and middle-income countries, but in the United States, people that live in cities, or near refineries or factories, are often affected as well.
Air pollution also ramps up during wildfire season.
Read more: Breathless: Pittsburgh's asthma epidemic and the fight to stop it
Water pollution — as of 2014, every year more people die from unsafe water than from all forms of violence, including war. Water is the ‘universal solvent’, meaning it can dissolve more substances than any other liquid on Earth. Thus, it is too easy for toxic chemicals to enter our water supply.
Read more: Sacred Water: Environmental justice in Indian Country
Lack of access to health care — yes, this is an environmental health issue! Having an accessible health care system is part of one’s environment. Difficulty getting health care can further impact one’s health.
Poor infrastructure — from “food deserts” to lack of transportation services, living in an area with poor infrastructure can impact your health.
Read more: Agents of Change: Amplifying neglected voices in environmental justice
Climate change — climate change-induced heat waves, increased frequency and severity of large storms, droughts, flooding, etc. have resulted in health problems and even death.
Chemical pollution — chemical pollution can be sneaky: the chemicals in your everyday products, from shampoo to deodorant to your clothing to the food you eat, can directly affect your health. These chemicals are often not on the label or regulated at all.
Read more: Exposed: How willful blindness keeps BPA on shelves and contaminating our bodies
How can we improve our environmental health?
Credit: instaphotos
Educate yourself. Environmental health is a broad topic, so this can seem overwhelming. Start by taking stock of your own personal environment. Look up air pollution monitoring in your area. Get your water tested to see its chemical makeup. Evaluate the products you use in your life — personal products like shampoo and deodorant, household cleaners, air fresheners, the foods that you eat — and see what you’re bringing into your home.
Explore the Environmental Working Group's guides to check your products for toxic chemicals.
We have additional guides to help you learn more about environmental health. Find guides to plastic pollution, environmental justice, glyphosate, BPA, PFAS and more in the Resources tab at the top of our website.
As individuals we have the power to improve some of our environmental health, but there is a pressing need for systemic change and regulation on a policy level.
We’re actively working with scientists to share their research and knowledge with politicians to advocate for science-backed policy change. But we need your help. Contact your representatives to let them know that environmental health is important to you — whether it’s air pollution in your area, contaminated water, plastic pollution, food deserts in your area, or chemicals in consumer products.
Subscribe to Above the Fold, our daily newsletter keeping you up-to-date on environmental health news.
Dr. Diana Hernández joins the Agents of Change in Environmental Justice podcast to discuss how housing and energy impact our health and well-being.
Hernández, a tenured associate professor of sociomedical sciences at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, also talks about “social impact real estate” and how she’s investing in her South Bronx neighborhood.
The Agents of Change in Environmental Justice podcast is a biweekly podcast featuring the stories and big ideas from past and present fellows, as well as others in the field. You can see all of the past episodes here.
Listen below to our discussion with Hernández, and subscribe to the podcast at iTunes, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Transcript
Brian Bienkowski
My guest is Dr. Diana Fernandez, a tenured associate professor of socio Medical Sciences at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. She talks about her work on energy, equity, housing and health, and how she's investing in the Bronx. Enjoy. All right, I am super happy to be joined by Dr. Diana Hernandez. Diana, how are you doing today?
Diana Hernández
I'm alright, I'm doing well. Thank you.
Brian Bienkowski
Where you today? Where are you talking to us from? I see a beautiful brick facade in the background, looks very urban.
Diana Hernández
It is. So I'm at the Russell Sage Foundation. It's where I've been for the past few months. I'm on sabbatical this year. And I'm on a visiting fellowship here at Russell Sage. And this place kind of brings together a bunch of social scientists that are working on issues of race, ethnicity, immigration, or social inequality, and other kinds of topics that are related to the social condition to support various forms of scholarship, but oftentimes book projects. And that's what I'm doing. I'm working on a book.
Brian Bienkowski
Excellent. Well, congratulations. And I'm sorry, at the same time because I know book projects can be just a huge heavy load, but good for you. I'm excited to read it because I've through this interview research, I've gotten to know what you've been up to. And it’s really fascinating stuff. And I'm really happy that you're here today. So I'd like to start at the beginning. So you are from the Bronx, proudly from the Bronx. So tell me a little bit about your upbringing, and what role if any, it played in you wanting to become a researcher focused on health injustice.
Diana Hernández
I mean, I think a lot of it has made more sense to me in hindsight. Growing up working class in a really poor neighborhood, just was my kind of normal reality, I guess, when I was growing up in the South Bronx. And I was born in a section eight building. And my parents were among the first to occupy that building, it was new construction at that point. There were facets of the building that to me are kind of fascinating today, because they kind of link back to some of the things that I work on, including a community garden that was basically a designated space off to the left of the building, if you were looking at it straight on. And my father, being a migrant from Puerto Rico, with you know, a bit of a kind of agricultural background, like he had his little plot of land in the garden. I guess he would grow peppers and other things and make the hot sauce that he would ultimately like put on my finger, my thumb on so I would stop sucking it. Well, that's kind of besides the point, and I don't know that this that needs to be like part of this discussion, but you know, that's some of the things that I remember. The other pieces of my kind of life, I often think about my life is kind of by place. And, and that place just by zip code, but also by like the address. And that's a lot of how I think about my research.
So I went from a building in the Morrisania section of the Bronx to a condo that my mom purchased kind of post divorce and working full time and after... I guess the year she graduated that was her gift, she finished her BA when I was 13, and we moved in 1995 to this condo. And it was an interesting kind of what I like to call "moving to opportunity" because she became a homeowner. I saw that kind of in real life, that transition. It was also like a very different place. Because there were other kinds of middle income families. We were probably one of the only households with a single parent as head of household, most of the other households were kind of intact. And then after that, I actually became a homeowner myself, when I went to Cornell, at the age of 19, for my PhD. And that transition also really helped me to understand like what it means to be a homeowner, but also how to manage a lot of different things. And, and then, when I moved back to the Bronx, after finishing my PhD, I ended up also, I had a partner at that time that was in real estate. And I learned a lot from him about how to like manage properties. And then I ultimately started to buy properties on my own.
And I was doing this kind of in parallel with this kind of research agenda that was trying to kind of get at housing in a more nuanced fashion and kind of understand it not just as a platform for... it is a platform for life, right? Like I mean, we launch our lives from our homes every day, but also, that it's not just about affordability. And it's not just about neighborhoods. And I think at that time, when I was kind of working on housing research, it was that or conditions. And I've since started to kind of tie a bow, I guess, around the concept of housing, and what its kind of dimensions are to better understand then ultimately how it links to health. And it's both kind of a social and environmental platform, or environment, that ultimately kind of affects health in a number of ways.
So that's, I guess, the long story short around like how my upbringing in some ways has kind of influenced this nuanced understanding of poverty and housing. And my goal, I think, ultimately is for people to enjoy decent, affordable housing that is stable over time. And that is situated in a neighborhood that offers the kinds of institutional connections and other kinds of opportunities for people to live their best life, regardless of the zip code, or the race, ethnicity or other kind of dimensions of composition, I think this is something that we all deserve.
Brian Bienkowski
So you mentioned Cornell briefly. And so you went to Hunter College and Cornell for both your masters and PhD focusing on sociology at all three of them. So what was it about the field of sociology that grabbed you and made you feel like you could make a positive difference through this sociological research?
Diana Hernández
So I remember having like these long walks with my mom, so like anybody that knows me and knows that I love walks and talks, and I think maybe that just like started really early in my life. And in that time, like, I think I was making sense of my social world. And it was really easy for me to process and analyze things in the social world. And then when I went to college, I guess I was in a hurry. And I took like, a whole semester, but like six classes worth of 18 credits of sociology. And so I was basically immersed into sociology. And really, after that time, there was no turning back, it was to me like, extremely interesting. And it provided a lens and a language by which to understand and process my own lived experience, but also the different worlds that I was straddling at the time. So right now, I'm, in fact, coming back to Russell Sage, feels like full circle, because Hunter [College] is just four blocks away. So I'm on 64th street now and Hunter's on 68th Street and Lexington. And the Upper East Side is one of the wealthiest communities in the United States and even the world in terms of like, the concentration of wealth, and I was traveling to this very wealthy area in New York City from one of the poorest areas in the US. And so that contrast and the kind of inequality to me was extremely fascinating. But somehow I hadn't really like processed the fact that I was so poor until I went to college. Which is just weird, right? Like I guess we all get like enculturated and our realities our normal lives. And it's only when you see some kind of alternative that you realize like there was kind of, and in my case, like it was there was just such a vast difference in opportunities and and how people would navigate things. So, sociology for me has always been kind of a little bit of an anchor in being able to conceptualize like, the social condition as well as kind of understand social patterning, and the people that are kind of the winners and losers in some ways. And I hate to put it that way. But I guess, in some ways, I focus so heavily on, you know, issues of inequality that it does kind of naturally, you know, like, have this contrast between people that are doing well, and people that aren't.
Brian Bienkowski
So before we get into some of that research, you're talking about, I've been asking everyone on the podcast, what is the defining moment or event that shaped your identity up to this point? and that can be personal professional.
Diana Hernández
Um, I guess, I mean, there's so many ways. So I guess my racial identity, for instance, I remember sitting on my aunt's lap, and at that point, I don't know why, but like, I just identified as white at that point. And my aunt was very quick to tell me like, "you're Puerto Rican." And over time the ways in which I understand my own kind of identity is more rooted in these cultural histories and things like that. But I was, I'm so happy that, you know, she sat me down and was like, you know, just kind of, like, told me the truth –Like, I'm just Puerto Rican, you know. And that was great. But I think I identify as a boss, not because I'm like, the best manager, but but I do understand that I am a visionary, and that I am gifted with the Power of Inspiration. And to me, that's what leadership is about, is about bringing people along so that they start to see the world in a way that you see it. And I actually learned that from developing housing. Because I love the fact that I could take, you know, something that was dilapidated and vacant and underappreciated, and invest in it in all these kinds of ways, but really kind of set a vision for what it could be, even long before it was that. And so I've been really kind of fortunate to have this like parallel existence as a housing practitioner, because that has helped me to form this identity as a boss. I try to live up to that, but I don't know. But I, you know, it's something that because I was successful in doing it in this one realm, I do feel like that kind of carries over into other dimensions of my life and my work.
Brian Bienkowski
Well, I can say that everybody I talked to about your work, the idea of you being a visionary, you are not the only one that holds that. That that came up a lot. And in people I spoke to getting ready to talk to you.I do want to talk about your real estate, because I find that fascinating, but let's start with some of your research. So you focus on the intersection of energy, equity, housing, and health. And you're one of the kind of the foremost researchers exploring energy insecurity. So I think there was an incredibly kind of painful example of this in January, right there in the Bronx, where you're from when a faulty space heater caused a deadly fire. This is just, you know, a few weeks back. So can you walk us through what that term mean in your research? that term energy insecurity. What makes people most vulnerable to this insecurity and some potential interventions you've seen in your research or other literature that that we could use to combat this problem?
Diana Hernández
So I like to kind of at least start with the idea that recognition is the first step to justice, right? We can't correct for something that we can't name, and that we can identify as a problem. And I'm fortunate, because I listen, and I trust people. And I came to understand this problem of energy insecurity, because I observed and I listened to people that were like dealing with this, ultimately, this hidden hardship, right, like this thing that I mean, kept them home, and they were cold, or they were like, totally nervous about their bills, they were totally indebted and behind in their utility expenses, they were juggling between different expenses. And it all had to do with their household energy and the ability for their physical environment to meet the task of keeping them thermally comfortable, and, like just having the basics – like the lights on and you know, appliances that function, and things like that. But also like the economic means by which to keep up.
So energy insecurity is defined as the inability to adequately meet household energy needs. And as my work in this space has evolved, I've also kind of started to think that it's not just about the dynamics that are happening at the household level, but it's also the kind of issues around the energy infrastructure and systems that exist. And also like these more macro level factors, of course, the kind of economy and things like that, but climate change, right? climate change is adding pressures to the energy system, it's also adding pressures to households, so that more people are actually can be considered energy insecure, that are not poor. I think about people like the folks that are impacted by the wildfires in California. And, you know, you have extremely wealthy people that are kind of being shut off preemptively, because the utilities play a large kind of role in creating and then exacerbating these wildfires. So there's this kind of interplay between energy systems and climate change.
Now, what we observed in the Bronx, and the fire that basically cost the lives of 17 people, nine of them children, in a building, not unlike the one that I grew up in – it was built in the 70s, it was part of this resurgence of like building the Bronx back up after the kind of fires that were set, sometimes intentionally, sometimes just by lack of maintenance and things like that – harkens to this idea that they are people that are coping with inadequate thermal conditions in their buildings, and relying on alternative heating methods, like the space heaters, or ovens, or stove tops to keep warm. And in this case, the space heater was on incessantly, there were also issues around the fire alarms, they would go off so much so that people learn to ignore them, because they were false alarms. And this is really situated in a broader problem of like many, many people living in the Bronx, in particular, like calling in for no heat complaints on an annual basis. So since they've been collecting this data, the Bronx has always come up, especially if you do a per capita kind of analysis, as most impacted by the lack of heat. Conversely, in winter, in the summertime, many more people that live in the Bronx, don't own an air conditioner. And so, this idea that... the way that I imagine living in dignity is, you know, like being able to be comfortable without having to be exaggerated in like what you're wearing at home, for instance, too little or too much, because you're trying to manage the thermal conditions. And the Bronx is like kind of the least able to live in that kind of a dignified manner. That's what I call energy insecurity. And my research is basically shown in a lot of different ways, using a lot of different kinds of data points, that this affects people of color, low income people, and people living certain housing forms the most. And, you know, it's kind of an opportunity for us to intervene, because now it's packaged in a way that we understand it. So then we can kind of plan policy and programmatic interventions accordingly.
Brian Bienkowski
So another leg of this table of research that you that you look at is housing, and I think most of us have a relatively limited view when we think of housing. But in your research, you've pointed out that healthy housing spans you mentioned these four pillars, conditions, cost, consistency and context. Can you talk about these pillars and how they interact and influence health and health disparities?
Diana Hernández
Yeah, so the four C's of housing conditions – [conditions], cost, consistency and context– are really all about understanding the economic aspects of housing, right? It's also about understanding environmental quality, so those conditions. It's also being able to process like displacement and those factors that might displace people that are happening at a larger scale, like gentrification, or some kind of a climate impact, and then the idea of like, kind of getting people back into those neighborhoods is a problem; or evictions, right, that's within that consistency pillar. And then neighborhood effects: So the idea that people could actually live in a safe neighborhood, in a neighborhood that has good schools, that has grocery stores with healthy and affordable food that, you know, just has like kind of the amount of green space, like amenities that make it livable, and also healthy. And at any one point, some of those issues are being this tension, right. So sometimes affordable housing is in a neighborhood environment that isn't really set up with a lot of opportunity in different forms, or that the affordable housing is probably sometimes – often – having kind of conditions issues, so it isn't the healthiest environment. And the other tension is really about like if you're challenged around affordability, your opportunity to stay voluntarily in that place, without being displaced or forced out, is more challenged. Those, again, that packaging of housing and understanding it in that way, also helps us to understand not just the usual suspects around health outcomes, such as asthma, for instance, or chronic stress, right? I mean, people that are burdened by like affordability challenges, or the cumulative burden of all of those things combined, are just carrying a lot. And so of course, they're feeling more stressed. I mean, in the context of a neighborhood environment that doesn't feel welcoming or safe, I mean, that literally means that your home environment is that much more important. There's a lot more reliance on that – there's lead exposure, there's all of these things, there's like all these pressure points.
And so my work really, at least conceptually, started to paint a picture around the links between these pillars and a number of different outcomes that can come of it in the physical form of health, including, like, you know, general health status, hospitalizations, emergency room visits, these kinds of things, as well as mental health. And because we can't disconnect mental health from physical health, you know, I come at public health as a sociologist, so I think a little bit more upstream, if you can even see that as a pattern, so I'm not committed to a health outcome. I mean, a lot of the ways in which NIH, for instance, is organized is around a disease state. I just don't think about the links between housing and health based on one particular disease state because I can see all of the ways in which you know, the pillars of housing or the context of housing ultimately can impact child health, prenatal health, the health of the elderly, like, so many pieces come together, and you can look at, you know, like age appropriate outcomes as well if you're kind of more agnostic to a particular outcome, but moreso looking at the upstream determinants, which I would say housing is sitting more upstream for sure.
Brian Bienkowski
So you mentioned children. So let's take a second and connect us to kind of federal housing policy. So you've examined national housing policies, including public housing and rental assistance, and how it influences early childhood development. So what did you find and what are some areas our federal housing safety net could improve to better serve children?
Diana Hernández
So you're referring to a study that we did in Fresno, California. It was the first site where the rental assistance demonstration, or RAD, program was implemented. And it's since it has become so standardized, but at that point, it was really novel to look at what this repackaging of housing actually looked like. It was basically going from Section nine housing, which is public housing, to Section Eight housing, in this case, project-based is the vouchers – that I think people are more familiar with – But you can also live like how I lived in the section eight building, so the subsidies attached to the actual building. And what was interesting about that transition wasn't so much the administrative shift from Section nine to Section Eight – it actually meant nothing, it wasn't any different for a household that was impacted by that change, they still pay the same kind of a third of their household income to rent – but what did come of it was an unlocking of capital improvement funding. So one of the biggest challenges of public housing is the conditions in which they exist, in part because of when they were built (in large part, at the middle of the last century, so the 50s 60s 70s, that's when a lot of the public housing was constructed) And it needs maintenance. And not only maintenance: at different points, you actually need major capital improvements. But because this is all subject to congressional approval, there were always lots and lots of lots of issues in getting the dollars for the necessary capital improvements. And so that shift is, in some ways, what has been referred to (it's not always constructed this way) as the privatization of public housing, where there are private partners that come in and kind of have ownership stake in public housing, in order to activate the kind of capital improvement pieces and to leverage the properties themselves as assets, like, capital assets, like stuff that you own and appreciate and value, as opposed to just kind of managing it as a government like property essentially.
And what we found when, when that, well, in that transition in Fresno... the Fresno Housing Authority actually was really good about like... they were the developers, so they didn't really engage in like a public-private partnership. So that's why the structuring of those deals isn't always as simple as saying that it's the privatization of public housing. Any way you cut it, what was really interesting in that came from that transition is that they were able to upgrade the unit's substantially. They put in new cabinets, and new kitchen cabinets actually, sometimes increase the square footage of the actual units, put in washers and dryers, dishwashers, upgraded the heating and cooling. Just like basically, it was like, you know, those shows do HGTV or whatever for like for public housing, which was pretty cool. And it was interesting to see unfold. But I think ultimately, what that did for the families that we were tracking that had children – we were looking at educational outcomes – So the kids that were living in RAD sites were less likely to be absent from school, and more likely to have kind of better GPAs. And so there were kind of positive educational outcomes. But when we also asked parents about, like, what this transition meant for them, they were more proud about where they lived. They felt that they had more amenities not just in their built in, like in their actual unit, but because they will also upgrades and partnerships for other amenities on site that was also kind of more helpful. And they felt like combined, all of those things meant that the kind of renewed environment was better for their children.
And I believe that that is, I mean, we actually saw that in New York City too. We looked at RAD in the Bronx, and we were looking at smoking indoors as an outcome and also residential satisfaction. And a year before and a year after doing surveys we did find positive results on both of those indicators showing on the one hand that when the place is invested in by others, people are more likely to take care of it, which is the indoor smoking maybe even having kind of less stress to contend with, So less need to actually be smoking indoors. But also just generally reporting greater satisfaction in their residential environments. And I think all of those things are really, really hopeful.
Brian Bienkowski
So let's stay on the optimistic front here. Because talking about environmental injustice and energy insecurity can often be a little overwhelming. What are some places other places that you see optimism and hope and solutions that are happening both in kind of the fair housing and housing available to people and energy security?
Diana Hernández
I have to say that I'm most hopeful on the energy side, I think the housing side is very complicated. I think housing, the housing stock that exist is getting better when available, like resources exist. But I still think that they many, many people are locked out of housing and affordable housing, and I don't think that we have a good handle on the question of homelessness, even in a right-to-housing city like New York City, there are many more people that are homeless than should be, because we also haven't figured out the long term strategy. So I'm concerned about housing in general. I don't know that kind of goes away.
But I can say that energy is actually a platform for making housing better. A lot of the the issues that people have in their homes have a lot to do with energy efficiency, and with the kind of energy performance. So how do you make a home habitable, especially these days, that you're able to kind of turn on the lights and have the heating and cooling that you need? That's one, it's not the only, but I think it's a really important and big aspect. And I think that there are new investments that are happening within the energy space, to improve the infrastructure of buildings and homes. And I think right now, what I'm excited about is that the conversation is happening with equity as a starting place. Ten years ago, I mean, I published my first paper in 2010 on this whole issue of housing and energy, and I've been kind of thinking about it for a little bit longer than that, so, I mean, let's talk about it as a decade and a half endeavor. It's kind of interesting that we talk about energy justice, and we talk about the question of just transitions, I think now in such a present and upfront way; whereas when I first started this work, like the decarbonisation and climate people, were talking about this as like, environmental, you know, like issues and whatever, and it was all about, like the environment, but not really like the people that are implicated in this. And I think now, the conversation around energy has really shifted, and there's a recognition that we have to kind of be thinking about equity, and an equitable and just transition, not just the transition, because, you know, we can shift energy resources and sources. But if some people are completely left behind, and also the ones that have, from their own kind of behaviors, the lightest carbon footprint, it's just unfair. And I think that there were a few things that kind of inspired a little bit of an emphasis on this, of course, like the the research and like, kind of, it just takes a little bit of time for all of that stuff to pick up.
But obviously, there was like all the pressures around George Floyd, I mean, I think that that kind of opened up the need to be thinking about racial inequities, and all of the ways in which people of color, black people, indigenous people, Latinx, like just the whole gamut of people of color are just having challenges in like, just being. And police brutality is one example of that, but there are so many other examples. And I think that, you know, was kind of this opportunity for people to start looking within and to start making commitments about justice. I'm not going to necessarily say that all of those commitments will be fruitful. But I'm happy that at least it's you know, like, a top of mine and tip of tongue. Because that's really, I think progress compared to where we were not too long ago.
Brian Bienkowski
Yeah, and I think I mean, the summer of 2020. It also got a lot of people that were working on justice and race issues together. Maybe they were operating in silos, maybe it was economic justice over here and environmental justice here, police brutality and criminal justice reform. And it seemed like at least from my point of view that a lot of them started coming together. Those groups, those activist, those researchers and saying "no, this is all connected, this is all part of the same problem." And that seems like it's gotten the snowball growing and moving a lot faster to me.
Diana Hernández
Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, we need that kind of those exponentiating forces to come and just say, like, you know, "people aren't just suffering in this particular way. They're suffering in a lot of different ways. And there's a lot of room for improvement." And there's more so if we actually kind of come together on these issues. And so yeah, I agree with your assessment that, you know, there there is this kind of force multiplier that happened in 2020. And I think also other people like, I mean, I think really what happened in 2020, was that people started to connect the dots. Let's say, like, the social justice community and stuff like that. I think also people outside of that community started to kind of look within and say, like, "what are we doing that contributes to this?" And that's important, because power flows not just from the powerless trying to get attention, but also from people that possess power, to be willing to interrogate the ways in which their possession of this resource is contingent upon other people not having it. And also, where they might need to give up a little bit of those privileges in order for there to be just a bit more equity and a bit more justice. Because the plight for social justice can't just be about people that want more without also the engagement and people that have more.
Brian Bienkowski
Right. And so on this optimistic tip, we've mentioned this earlier, you mentioned some of your real estate work. So full disclosure, Diana came and talked to the Agents of Change fellows and talked about this. And it was the first thing as a journalist that went off in my head –that's interesting. This is interesting stuff. So in addition to all of your research work, you've gotten involved in social impact real estate in the Bronx, at least, it was described on your professor researcher page there, which I really liked the way that's put, so tell us what is social impact real estate, and what have you done there in your native Bronx with it.
Diana Hernández
Um, so I can say that they're different iterations of social impact real estate, I think the big developers like, you know, the people that do like low income housing, tax credit deals, and all that stuff, like they think about what they're doing and social impact real estate, because they are providing housing, like affordable housing – one could like, you know, debate how affordable it really is – but like, that's, you know, I think the big umbrella and more than likely how people, you know, might be kind of thinking about social impact real estate. I think of myself as like, a proof of concept person. And by that, I mean, like, what if more of us that have options about where we live, basically chose to live in neighborhoods that require a little bit more attention, but also more intentionality.
So I was thinking about this recently. This year, I have an 82-year-family-legacy in the South Bronx. So my grandmother came in 1940 as a Puerto Rican migrant. And she was really kind of part of the first wave of Puerto Ricans leaving the island for kind of better opportunities in the Bronx. She was 16, she came to like, help her sister as a caretaker for her nieces and nephews. And she was a black Puerto Rican and had all kinds of in the US understood in that way. And so there's a story, and I can't verify as my grandmother has since passed away, but that during her honeymoon, she and her husband went to Chicago, but he was processed as a white person, and she was processed as a black person. And it was very much in the Jim Crow era. And they had to like separate in the restaurant and like how heartbreaking, right? to be on your honeymoon and to have that kind of experience.
In any case, with these kind of big, or strong roots in the Bronx, when I went to grad school, it was really my first time leaving the city and having to like reconstitute my relationship with the Bronx. And at first it was a lot of shame. Shame because like I was like, inundated in this other environment in upstate New York, where there was like a college town, everything was clean and just ran really efficiently and nicely, anD I was like at this like fancy school for the first time in my life and, all of the buildings –I mean talk about the built environment– giving signals about how important you are, and like this kind of historical embeddedness, and all of this stuff. I just was like having all kinds of like feelings about, you know, what was going on.
And I think a very legitimate feeling was a feeling of coming back and like kind of processing the Bronx with a certain criticism about how chaotic it was and how dirty it could be, and like how problematic like on a social level it was. And then I started reading sociology books, and like starting to think like, Well, hey, that's interesting, because I mean, one of the things that happens with upward mobility is the exit strategy. And the idea that you start to kind of align yourself with this more kind of mainstream vision for where to live, and how to like go about your life. And I felt like, you know, all like that people like me, we were kind of invested in this idea of the social markers of progress. Because we then choose the right zip codes, and we like, kind of engaged in all of this stuff. But what if we turned that on its head? And what if we were the ones that actually like, bought up properties, and lived in the communities?
I always felt this charge to be a role model, like ever since I was young. I always I felt, I don't know why. But I felt like I needed to be like, the person that kids looked up to. And then I was like, well, I could afford on my little professor salary to buy properties in the Bronx, and to rehab them. And I've done that. And it's was, I mean, I remember, like, people kind of looking at me, like, "what are you doing?", you know, and now they think I'm brilliant. But it was this kind of a social experiment. I mean, I have to say that my husband is from Brooklyn, and like, those borough like identities, like are a real thing. And so, he has moved to the Bronx very reluctantly. But I think he also has come around to understanding and appreciating, and he said this the other day, so I'm going to quote him, he said, you know, "the Bronx gives a lot of love, it just doesn't get a lot of love back." And I think it's been that kind of reputational hazard that is more of an issue than the real dynamics that are happening in the community.
When I say that I do social impact real estate, it's because my goal is to allow people that are living in the neighborhood to continue to live in the neighborhood. But to do so with an elevated kind of standard of living, like, you know, actually inside of the units, because the units are really beautiful. And I really have prided myself in investing my own hard-earned capital, like, if I didn't have my professor job, I couldn't be a real estate person, maybe people think of it is like the opposite. But it's true, like, at least, you know, initially. And so that's, yeah, that's the social impact. The social impact is me living in an environment where somebody like me doesn't have to live. But, you know, kind of intentionally chooses to live and me making it possible for other people that are in the community to live well, and, and to enjoy the pillars of housing that I think are important even as we work on the kind of context piece. But that's my little slice of the solutions.
Brian Bienkowski
I think it's very cool. It reminds me when I when I graduated from college, I'm from Detroit, and there was this kind of people in my in my social circle, a lot of people went to Chicago and these kind of upscale neighborhoods basically after college, everybody, all these big 10 kids go to these these places in Chicago. But this was before Detroit has had a lot of its energy and economic development it's had in the last decade (and we could certainly talk about if that economic development is reaching all areas of the city) but it certainly, it's become a more vibrant place. And I always thought like a lot of people are attracted to places that are already there, so to speak, or places that have that are maybe not there yet. But if you are willing to put a little bit of your time and effort, there's so much opportunity in those places. And I always thought Detroit was such a place of opportunity, not just because housing was cheaper than in Chicago, or wherever, but there was just such a kind of a beautiful, gritty resilience to the place. And that kind of spiderwebbed into urban gardens and the music scene and all kinds of aspects of it. So I always thought of these two distinct kinds of people, those that want to invest in the place that they're at, or kind of want to go where it's already fixed up and ready.
Diana Hernández
And I think the interesting thing is that... there's I guess another piece to that for the people that are investing in the places that are not quite there is also like, how much you're invested in just an improvement of what is like a revitalization versus like literally, reconstituting the whole neighborhood. So, I mean, what's really, to me, like so striking these days is that there's like, literally luxury housing in the South Bronx, and I say that, because I'm just like, that's just interesting, but it just doesn't feel like it's for the people that are here, right? Like, it literally like, feels like, there's this idea that they're just going to somehow attract like, all these other folks that like, have no ties to the community and are not invested in what is, and in the people that are there, they just want to totally just redo the cultural and people landscape of these neighborhoods. I mean, it's gentrification, right? and that, I think, is the difference between people that are investing for the purposes of improving what's there versus the people that just want something that's totally different and they're doing it with the investment being as the kind of driving force, as opposed to the preservation. I don't know. I mean, I haven't necessarily like articulated this, and maybe that might be my next book, but, you know, it's just like, there is something to this, right? there's something to the idea that some people want things to be a better version of what you know, of what it is, versus like wanting to do a total, like kind of reholding of the neighborhoods.
Brian Bienkowski
Yeah, you touched on the nuance that I didn't mention that I that I meant to and I'm glad you did, is the fact that you don't want to turn it into the Upper East Side, you want it to remain the Bronx, but just have people have a higher standard of living, better housing, better amenities and stuff. And I think that's the difference. And it's very cool, I love the idea that you're doing that, and connecting your research to some of the stuff you're doing outside of it, especially in a place that you love. So I have a few more questions here. And these are kind of more about your experience as a woman of color in this field. So first, you're the only tenured women of color at your institution. And I was wondering, what changes do you want to help create to address this problem, which is, of course, not just at your institution, but all across the country?
Diana Hernández
I mean, I want to Well, first of all, normalize the idea that we can be badasses. And like existing in institutions that, you know, for so long kind of fell out of reach. And so, you know, I think part of it, again, is that idea of like being just a role model, like, you know, that there's growth in this leadership actually, and just being and totally owning a story that is familiar without it being compromised by these other ambitions around aculturating and kind of acclimating to this mainstream. So I feel like I have an anti-mainstream story and, I like it and I think and I hold that to a high regard.
But I'm also, especially now like so committed and so intentional about the composition of my team, invested in bringing others forward. I just had a lab meeting yesterday and since I've been away and like the pandemic and the whatever, but like, I just have like badass women of color on my team. I'm like, Yes, and they all are having ambitions of you know, like, going and getting their own PhDs. And I see other folks that, like Daniel Carrión is also an AOC-EJ fellow and like, you know, some of the other mentees that I've had over the years that like, they're just powerful and amazing in their own way, but they really add to the diversity of the academy. They're asking more nuanced and interesting questions, in part because they're bringing their own diverse lived experiences. And to me, that's what I, that's what I'm about. I feel like I have made this turn over to like... I think I've established my research and the importance of the work that I do enough that I can now leverage my scholarship and my reputation in the field to help others come up. I just think that that's kind of amazing. And I'm so grateful to the many people that did that for me, and that didn't always look like me either. And so like, I don't always necessarily think that your mentors have to be people that have the exact same profile as you, but they have to be kind. And they should be generous, and they should be able to allow you license to be all of the amazing things that you are. And that to me is like the guiding principles that I'm living with in terms of who I'm supporting, and how I'm supporting this kind of next generation. And the fact that like that is my focus now is a testament to the fact that I can't say that I've made it like that I have like achieved all of the amazing things that I'd like to achieve in life, but then I'm in a place that really requires me to bring others also along and allow them to kind of flourish in all of the amazing ways that they should.
Brian Bienkowski
I'm glad you mentioned that second part because I happen to work with a whole bunch of badass women of color at Agents of Change, I think there's seven or eight of them. Andas an editor now, I've been in this for 10 years, and I'm of course, I'm a white guy, and obviously was afforded a lot of privilege to get where I'm at, but when you make it, regardless of who you are, you can use that position to try to get diverse voices out there. So I really appreciate that thought because we're trying to do that as well, and you don't have to be a member of a group to try to elevate voices.
Diana Hernández
Oh, absolutely, absolutely. I mean, my own mentor is, she's like my Jewish mom. And actually, I have a few of those, like just good people that were like, you know, we see you, we believe in you, and you have something to say and to offer and like go. And you know, that's really what a mentor is about. A mentor isn't about like, well, I guess there are different kinds of mentors and I think that there there are different ways in which it can be influential in your own development; but that is, I think, an important piece of this. And I've learned to hire this way. Before I used to kind of focus so much on credentials, and on what people said that they could do when like what how their resumes, like, you know, shook out. Now I'm like, Who are you? What's your, you know, like, what's your story? What's your motivation? And what's your willingness to like, just learn and be versatile, that I value more than, you know, somebody that comes in with the most polished resumes. I'm more concerned with their work ethic, I'm much more concerned with, like, their kind of personal characteristics. And not so much like, all of the ways in which you know, especially people that have, I guess, been tracked in a certain way like they would present in that fashion. But in my experience materialized into the most helpful team members. And so I used to not trust myself because I think I used to focus too heavily on what's on paper. Now I focus a lot more on those intangibles that ultimately like kind of open up the possibilities for people to just, you know, be flexible in how they approach things and like, be ingenious about like their contributions and I value that a lot more now.
Brian Bienkowski
So you mentioned your Jewish mother and speaking of motherhood, you are a new mom. So first of all, congratulations on that big life step. So how has motherhood changed your approach to your work?
Diana Hernández
It's funny because as you see that I'm just thinking about my baby and her two little teeth and how she has another one coming in and like, you know, it's just like paying attention to the details of another life and it's amazing. On the one hand is new responsibilities. Like yesterday I get I had this like team meeting, I had to, like, drop my baby off at daycare beforehand, like I never, I just like, you know, roll up to campus and go right ahead on my work day now it's just, it's different. It's you know, I'm balancing caretaking. And I'm just like loving this like little person who just is so funny in her own little ways and has like this amazing personality and I try to share her and integrate this important piece of my life into my work that I mean, maybe because she's only 10 months, and so like, I don't know how much that will always be the case. But right now, like we just are very connected, and it's a really beautiful thing.
And my life I think is a little bit more complex now than it ever was because I there was... I got to the point of being a tenured professor, I think I'm gonna say this, and it's a little controversial, and I just wish that it wasn't the case, but [it was] because I didn't have a child. I was just so dedicated to work. And I, you know, like pushed ahead. And I think our workplaces are unkind to mothers in particular and to parents, in general. But I can't do that anymore. So now I'm like, I have to depend on other people in a lot of different ways. I depend on the care side, sometimes like strangers, you know, like, I'm putting my child in the care of strangers. But that allows me to, you know, be a full person because I do, you know, I see myself as being a mom, but also more than a mom. And, and I still want to be able to contribute professionally. But it's just amazing to like go home to my husband and my child and like, you know, play and it's just sweet. It's it's a very, very sweet thing. And I know it's not for everybody. But for those that like kind of choose this route, I would say that there's I think a way to do it. I'm still trying to figure it out. But I think that there's also like, I hope some flexibility in how that works. I don't know that I have all the answers there. I think it's a work in progress. But the enjoyment factor, and you know, just the fulfillment –for me like I always wanted to be a parent – and so I love being a professional, but it never, it still felt a little empty for me. It wasn't enough for me to feel fulfilled. But now I feel like I'm just like living the dream.
Brian Bienkowski
Excellent. Excellent. Well, that is so nice to hear. And I have been starting this three rapid fire questions where you can just answer with one word or phrase just three of them and then we can move on and I can get you out of here. You've been so gracious with your time. So my first one is my favorite coffee shop in the Bronx is
Diana Hernández
My Nespresso machine at home.
Brian Bienkowski
Yankees Mets or I couldn't care less.
Diana Hernández
I'm a New York fan. Obviously Bronx, you know, as a working class family Mets, but I'm a Bronx girl. So I wrapped the Yankees too, but I guess I'm like not really a sports person anyway. So New York all the way.
Brian Bienkowski
My favorite comfort food is
Diana Hernández
Oh god, potato chips.
Brian Bienkowski
Diana, my last question that I've been asking everybody and I have to compile these one of these days because there are some good ones out there. What is the last book that you read for fun?
Diana Hernández
I feel like I have trouble remembering what that is. But as far as probably Daring Greatly by Britney Brown. I love me a little self help book here and there. So that's the last one and the Gifts of Imperfection, also by her.
Brian Bienkowski
Excellent. Well, Diana, thank you so much for your time today.
Diana Hernández
Thank you so much.
Dr. Jennifer D. Roberts joins the Agents of Change in Environmental Justice podcast to discuss nature as medicine for our physical and mental health.
Roberts, a tenured Associate Professor of Kinesiology at the University of Maryland School of Public Health in College Park, also talks about inequity in greenspace access and how she approaches mentorship.
The Agents of Change in Environmental Justice podcast is a biweekly podcast featuring the stories and big ideas from past and present fellows, as well as others in the field. You can see all of the past episodes here.
Listen below to our discussion with Roberts, and subscribe to the podcast at iTunes, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Transcript
Brian Bienkowski
Alright, today's guest is Dr. Jennifer D. Roberts, a tenured associate Professor of Kinesiology at the University of Maryland, School of Public Health in College Park. She is also the director of the public health outcomes and effects of the Built Environment Laboratory. Roberts talks about nature as medicine for physical and mental health, inequity and green-space access for different communities and how she approaches mentorship. Enjoy. Alright, I am super excited to be joined by Dr. Jennifer Roberts. Jennifer, how are you doing today?
Jennifer Roberts
I am great, Brian. How are you?
Brian Bienkowski
I'm doing wonderful. We are so happy to have you. We're so excited to have you here today. And I like to start with folks way at the beginning and you are from Buffalo, New York. You know, I just talked to one of our fellows who was from Buffalo, and she had such a beautiful, poetic way of describing one of my favorite rustbelt cities. So tell me about your experience growing up there, and if at all, how it shaped you as a person and the researcher that you are today?
Jennifer Roberts
Sure. So yes, I was born and raised in Buffalo, New York. And when I was a kid, I was a kid in the 70s and 80s and 90s, the city had a much larger population – almost double than what it is today. And the city was quite segregated in terms of like black, white neighborhoods. It still is today. And I think for me, the earliest time when I was growing up, I grew up on the east side, which was predominantly African American, and then by the time I was in middle school, my family moved a little further up north, near the University of Buffalo. And that neighborhood was a little bit more integrated racially, which I think had a lot to do with being near that campus. But along with my neighborhoods, I attended private schools pretty much my entire life. And so I was often that only Black child, or maybe one of few. And so that kind of imprinted my early notions and understandings regarding inequity and opportunity, because it's like, in my neighborhood, there was a lot of Black kids who look like me who were going to different schools, and those schools were under-resourced, and they just didn't have the same opportunities. And I could see that really early on as a child. And I think I, early, very early on saw like the difference between a black Buffalo and a white Buffalo. And that really just, you know, that shaped my experiences as a Black child and subsequently as a woman. And I think that's what I'm definitely informed by research and work today.
Brian Bienkowski
So just skip forward a little bit, you went to Brown University for undergrad, Emory University for your masters, and then earned your Doctor of Public Health degree from John Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health, I'll put the whole title in there. Where along the way did you decide that public health research was what you wanted to do? And what advice would you have for people who are still on that journey?
Jennifer Roberts
I often get asked this question. I actually have given some talks to undergrads and graduate students, because my professional as well as my academic trajectory was not really that linear. I mean, I knew since I would say before high school, and much earlier, actually, probably elementary school, that I wanted to do something with health and wellbeing and so I just kind of figured, well, that means you want to be a physician. So when I went to Brown, I was premed and I continued along that path, even when I started my MPH program at Emory University. But during my very first semester at Emory, I had to take the general introduction to environmental health class which all MPH students have to take. And there was a lecture by Dr. Howard Frumkin, we're still friends to this day, but I immediately fell in love with environmental health. And this whole idea of, well, public health and specifically environmental health, and then that completely changed my trajectory, my pathway away from medicine, to public health. So I guess, if I was gonna give some advice to folks, I would say, like, listen to your gut and try to follow your heart with what gives you passion, like what helps you say, "I would still do this if I wasn't getting paid," that's also a good way to figure out if you like it. And then also like, don't compare your journey to others. So like, for example, I didn't have like maybe the traditional trajectory into academia, I was a consultant for about six years. And then I said, "Oh, okay, I think I want to go into the academy." And so it's okay if you take pitstops along the way and do other things. And you don't have to have the same kind of pathways other folks.
Brian Bienkowski
I really like that advice. Especially the idea of taking your time figuring out. I mean to figure out at 18... when I when I went to my university, I was 18 years old, and everybody was going into business. So I went into business, and then two years in, I'm wearing Grateful Dead shirts and have long hair, and I'm realizing I should not be in the business college. This is not me, this is not who I am. And to decide that at 18, it's just a really, at least for me – and I think men mature a little more slowly – but it was an early time to decide what I wanted to do with my life. So I really like that advice.
Jennifer Roberts
Yeah. And even how it's changing. Like, you don't have to just choose one thing anymore. Like before, in our parents’ generation that was like, "Okay, this is one job, I'm going to stick with it for like 60 years." But now you can have like, multiple careers. I went to school with someone, he went to law school practice, and then he was like, "Okay, I want to open like a cupcake store." Like, you can just do whatever you want (well, not whatever you want), but, you know, don't try to like box yourself into something if you're kind of being drawn to something else that you find interesting.
Brian Bienkowski
Yes, totally. So I want to hear about the work you are doing and what you would be doing, even if you weren't getting paid for it. But first, I've been asking everybody, what is the defining moment that shaped your identity?
Jennifer Roberts
That's a really good question. You know, when I think about it, I don't think there was one single moment. I think a defining period for me that shaped my identity, specifically as a Black woman, was when I was a student at Brown University. And so up until this point, before my freshman year, I attended so many predominantly – and I would even say centrally – white schools, from kindergarten through high school. And so this was my first time to be surrounded by so many Black scholars. And I kind of just found my tribe in terms of the folks who were just sort of like me, but not always like me. And even though Brown is a predominately white institution, there was so much pro Black energy from students and faculty. And I think having that positive energy throughout my four years there, it kind of like reinforce the pride I had already as a Black individual, but also it really opened the doors to really be drawn and kind of surround myself by other cultures and other races and ethnicities. And I just think it was just, it built pride and happiness. And I think that was one, that was a defining period of my life, I guess, that shaped my identity.
Brian Bienkowski
That's excellent. Yeah, I think what I really liked in what you said, was seeing people that were like you, and also maybe not like you, maybe Black scholars that are different in their own way. I think that's important, this diversity within diversity, and that it's something you know, as a white man that I didn't, you know, you don't really think about that, because I was always told you can be whatever you want. And you see people in all these professions. So that perspective is great. And I hope that's changing today. Do you see that changing a little bit now that you are in institutions and maybe mentoring people like your younger self?
Jennifer Roberts
I do, but I feel like to some degree, it's changing at a snail's pace. I still find students – particularly my undergrad students – who seem to be kind of mirror images of me in terms of like, particularly my students of color, who are mirror images of me, of how I was at 18 years old. And almost... when I say a mirror image, I mean, kind of little hesitant, a little unsure, [asking themselves] do I fit in, and I wish the students kind of felt a little bit more like, "of course I belong here," like "of course I fit in." And so I still feel a little bit of that hesitancy and so... But I do see you know that there's many other... like there's community groups, there's, you know, the Black Student Union, and a lot of the students are still, you know, they feel comfortable. But I wish there had been a little bit more and faster advancements. But at least it's going in the right direction.
Brian Bienkowski
Of course, yeah, I mean, part of obviously, part of the Agents of Change program is to identify these folks and amplify them, and let others know that there are all kinds of people researching. And as a journalist, I've seen for years the same five climate scientists quoted in every New York Times story. And then I started working with Agents of Change and through other avenues, and it's like, "oh, there's so many people working on these issues that deserve to not only be in the media, but deserve to have their own words on the page," and so on, and so forth. So, you know, hopefully, we're all moving in that direction. So you now focus on the impact of the built social and natural environments and the public health of marginalized communities. Can you walk us through just what this means and some examples of how these different environments create health inequities for certain communities?
Jennifer Roberts
Sure, sure. So again, my focus is on the impact of built environment. So rather, I can easily say our manmade environments, like our houses, or neighborhoods, or even our transportation systems, and how that environment is related also to our social and our natural environments. And specifically, a lot of the inequities, whether they're the institutional destruction equities of all of these environments, how all of that put together impacts public health outcomes, specifically health outcomes or health behaviors. And so a lot of my research really examines the dynamic relationship of all of these with kind of active living lens to it, or specifically physical activity, but that can be like for play or recreation, or even for the purpose of transit. So do we walk to our schools? do we walk to work? And so I can give you an example. Often, or I can even say earlier on when I was earlier in my kind of research of this particular scholarship as an active living researcher, I focused a lot on the built environment. And so it was very much focused on Okay, are there sidewalks with the intersection density? You know, is there a transit system that people can get to and from places? and so, despite my lived experience as a Black woman, I kind of, I will say, ignored, but almost forgot about the impact of the social environment. And so I often now reference I'll say, well, Trayvon Martin, he was engaged in active transportation trying to walk from his home to the store, or Ahmaud Arbery, he was engaged in recreational activity, going for a jog, and because of their social-political environment, they were unable to complete the activity. And it was a fatal reason for why they were unable to complete the activity. And so I often talk about, you know, it's not just about the built environment, because as active living researchers, we really want to make sure the built environment is perfect, which it should be (well, not perfect) but should be promoting of activities. But we also have to think about, well, are some of these environments not welcoming for others? Or do some of these environments cause a different level of threat? And so a lot of my research will focus on these kinds of health inequities related to environments and I often talk about issues with walking while Black or running while Black, or even for a lot of communities of color. And then also to it's not even just the relationship built in social work, but the natural environment. So you know, how some natural environments are not as welcoming for communities of color, or how some kids of color don't even feel comfortable to go in natural environments. So kind of all that together, put together like in a salad, it's kind of like, all the little things or the big things that I research.
Brian Bienkowski
I thought of you the other day. So I was researching a little bit about your work for this call. And I was listening to a different podcast and they were talking about activity among children – just being physically active, basically. And it was, the researcher was talking about how from such a young age now, we're either kind of... we consider ourselves an athlete or a non-athlete. And the people who don't think they're an athlete now, there's a lot of things to do, they can watch TV, they can, you know, play video games, they can sit on their phone. Where back in the day, even if you were a "non-athlete," you still rode your bike and ran around with your friends because there was nothing else to do. So I'm just wondering, you said the word play in there, and I'm wondering if you could talk about that a little bit how we don't all have to be cycling 100 miles or running marathons to be active and healthy and just kind of playing or just being outside and moving our bodies is a good thing, even if we're "non-athletes."
Jennifer Roberts
Right, right. I think that's one of the things that's kind of been a barrier in how we self-identify ourselves very much early on with regard to activity. And a lot of times when I mention active play, I'm thinking about children, but adults play too. And when I did some of my earlier studies, I was looking at the physical activity of children. And so I would call it active play, because kids don't say, "Oh, I'm gonna go run around the block," you know, they go outside, and they're playing, and they're climbing trees, and they're doing whatever. But adults, you know, we can characterize our physical activity as play as well, you know. We, like you said, we don't have to get on the bike and you know, cycle 50 miles, we might just want to, you know, play a game of hide and seek with someone or we want to play badminton outside, or just, you know, games, just anything, that we're not sedentary and that we're moving. And something as simple as just walking is great as well, you know, so I think, if we kind of come outside of our heads and say, "Well, I'm not an athlete," or "I'm not this," and we just say, "Well, I just want to go outside and play," then we will start to welcome those opportunities of playing and before you know it, you will be a little bit more active.
Brian Bienkowski
And I love thinking about solutions in this space. And I want to talk about Nature Rx, and I read about this in one of your publications about how "admiration for nature can save us," you wrote with colleagues. So um, can you explain what Nature Rx looks like on your campus and in the context of, you know, college students specifically, just for an example, how this increased access to nature and green space can affect our physical and mental health in very positive ways?
Jennifer Roberts
Sure, and that quote, yeah, that "admiration for nature can save us" is a quote that I borrow from Alice Walker, who is you know, an awesome novelist, but she's a naturalist as well. And I just love how she can take words and make nature seems so majestic and beautiful and welcoming. And so I just love that quote. But in any case, the Nature Rx program, it was started a few years ago by myself and another colleague, Dr. Shannon Jetty, who's also here with me at the University of Maryland. And we kind of just stumbled on it at first, you know, we had met Robert Zarr, who is kind of the lead person of Park Rx, and that's the whole initiative to kind of combat chronic disease with nature through the use of like writing prescriptions. And he initially started doing that with his pediatric patients. And we met him at a luncheon when they were talking about Park Rx, and its partnership with Prince George's County – which is where University of Maryland sits – and he came and he said "You know what? Cornell has started this Nature Rx program, would you guys be interested in starting something at UMD?" And we were like "Sure!" And it sounded like a really cool idea. And so we came back that fall, and started to ask folks around campus who'd be interested. And we realized people all the way from landscape architecture, people from our arboretum office, from the rec center, all over, even, we have a historian; they came together, and they said they were interested in it. So we launched the program, and we came up with the mission. And our mission was to say that we wanted to highlight and leverage the natural spaces on our campus Arboretum, primarily for the purpose of health and well being as well as environmental stewardship. And there's so much data out there that talks about how beneficial nature is for your physical and your mental health, you know, it can reduce stress, it can improve cognition for adults and kids, help you with your sleep... I mean, it goes on and on. And so we wanted to make sure that we took advantage of this beautiful Arboretum in which our campus sits and encourage our students and our faculty and staff to go outside and engage in nature. There's many people on campus who don't know all of the green spaces around the campus. And so are the arboretum offers, you know, tours around campus for people who even been here for years. And then I would say that, as the organization evolved over the past couple of years, and particularly I would say, during the first year of the pandemic, and as I was really seeing things about the inequities with nature, our people didn't have parks to go to during the high level of quarantine, I really wanted to make sure that the aspect of inequity historically and presently was recognized. And so I came back and I said I wanted to add in another aim to Nature Rx, a goal, and that was one to really recognize the Piscataway people. So our campus lies on the indigenous land that was seized from the Piscataway people. And so I want to make sure that Nature Rx not only recognizes these Piscataway elders, but also brings to light, you know, some of the legacies of violence and the displacement, the migration of those ancestors through not only education, but other acts of tribute. And then along with Piscataway, I want to also make sure that Nature Rx is part of the conversation that acknowledges UMD's historic ties to the slave trade and even encourages conversation on ways that we can atone. So all of that kind of comes under that Nature RX umbrella, you know, the recognition that I just spoke about, the education – I'll be starting a new class this fall called "Black bodies, green spaces. From 1619 to today" – we'll have a research arm, and then that part, I'm assuming the prescription arm. So we'll start to have a pure program where we actually can write nature prescription so people can actually get a "prescription" and go outside, you know, and get 15 minutes of some nature, or however their their prescription will be written.
Brian Bienkowski
I need one of those. I need, I need a whole script! [laughts] you know, Jennifer, I was talking to another fellow on this podcast recently, and she talked about... she's a Hispanic woman and talked about when she got to college, environmentalism and kind of nature access in general was framed and like, people wearing Rei and $400 boots, and, you know, just the depiction of what it meant to be out in the environment. And someone who loved nature was a very specific kind of person and not a person that looked like her. I'm wondering how, if that aspect of environmentalism and nature access, you touch on that in your research? And if so, you know, how you deal with that dismantle those notions of, you know, high dollar entry costs, and you have to look like this in order to enjoy being outside?
Jennifer Roberts
Yes, I do. I do touch on that. And I will be touching on that in the class that I will teach this fall. And a lot of it is kind of an evolution of the relationship, and the connection of nature with communities of color. There may be some historical trauma that is associated with nature. So for example, a lot of lynchings occurred out in fields and out in nature. So there may be that, there may be other traumas associated. So there may have been some kind of retreat from nature. And then this kind of dogma was prevalent, like, "oh, people of color don't like nature, or they don't go out in nature." No, there was some stuff that went on. It's not that they don't like it, but there may be some hesitancy and so I do touch upon that in research, and then also the whole idea of how many places were segregated. In early parks, you know, they had a segregated, Shannon Doyle had a segregated spot for African Americans; pools, beaches were segregated. So there's that whole backdrop as well. And so that is something that, you know, we can't like gloss over, and then jump to why don't we see folks out, you know, who don't look white in these spaces? And so it's important to really know the history. And then also, presently, when you do go out, I also talk about kind of the microaggressions. So sometimes it's the overwelcoming or the subtle, not necessarily not so subtle, but the comments of like, "how did you know where this park was?" Like, like Rock Creek Park, like, this is the biggest park! like those subtle kinds of questions. So it still has this kind of like white centrality of like, well, this is nature, like, this is where we go, how did you guys hear about it? So some of those microaggressions even to this day, I've had colleagues who come and tell me, you know, since the pandemic, I've been going on nature more, and you know, I'll get these looks, or I'll get these comments or this and that, and it's so that kind of that microaggression. So it's all those things that are still there. That can be barriers for some folks, you know, and I try to tell people, I actually wrote an op-ed that's going to be coming out this month or next month, and I forgot the title, but it has to do with Black bodies and green spaces. And literally, I was talking about the fact that we need to reclaim it. And I just, I literally just moved to a new house in November, and I was talking about how much I love walking in the tree canopy but I know just like maybe five six miles away in a predominately African American neighborhood is not the same. And, and it shouldn't be that way. And so I talk about the nature gaps, but also talk about how, you know, we, we deserve it. When I say we, I mean communities of color, BIPOC, to be able to go to these spaces just as much as anyone. And I also like to say nature doesn't belong to anyone, you know. So it's something that, you know, you should just go and just reclaim that space and be able to enjoy it. So. So I just feel like, you know, all these things have to be discussed when we're talking about equity in nature and in green spaces.
Brian Bienkowski
there's a couple other studies you've published recently that I want to touch on. But before we move on from this, I want to ask you what nature means to you? I mean, you don't have to give me your secret spots where you like to go and be alone. Or be judged, apparently, for some reason by folks. But what does it mean to you, when you when you think about nature, what is what does it mean to you?
Jennifer Roberts
Um, well, sometimes, I do have to admit, I do like going out in nature walks by myself, but then I'll be like, "Okay, wait a minute. I'm here by myself" and you got to have you got to always have safety in the back your mind. But in any case, I really like to be by myself in nature, because I can really absorb kind of like the peace of it. I have a deep appreciation just for the sounds just being by a creek and hearing the water. But it gives me, it gives me hope it gives me life when I'm when I'm out in nature. And, and I really do believe the, you know, that quote that we mentioned early, "admiration for nature can save us." And sometimes when I go outside, it just kind of reinvigorates me. And I just love the idea of being out in and seeing the creation of nature, or creation of things that man did not do, so to speak, you know, it just, it's just wonderful. You'll see, well, we're out of that. Sometimes you'll see like a flower that is growing out of like, a sidewalk. It was like how did that come out through that crack? You know, like, the little things like that will amaze me. So, you know, it just, it kind of just reinvigorates me when I go out in nature.
Brian Bienkowski
Yeah, that's, that's really beautiful to hear. I know, during the very early days of the pandemic, when we were all literally just at our houses, you know, locked down, I live in a pretty rural area. So I was really fortunate to have, you know, I wasn't in a concrete jungle stuck in my house. And I drew a lot of optimism even though the world was just in such a crazy place at that time. Just knowing that the foxes were still coming to my house every night and that, you know, everything, everything outside was still moving at the same pace and was okay. And I know personally that made me feel really... made me feel okay.
Jennifer Roberts
Yeah, reassuring. Yeah, definitely is.
Brian Bienkowski
And my partner, my wife is, we own a farm. And we do seed saving, we focus on seed saving. And she has opened my eyes to these little tiny plants and the seeds and just like you mentioned, you know, the flower growing from concrete, these very tiny beings that are just so beautiful and have no business surviving, and they do.
Jennifer Roberts
Against all odds you able to come up and stand straight through the crack.
Brian Bienkowski
Right? That's like the Tupac poem, "The Rose that grew from concrete" Yes, very much so. So speaking of the pandemic, unfortunately, here we are a few years later, and we're still we're still dealing with it, as me and you talk right now. And so you had some interesting research on COVID-19 looking at the disproportionate impacts on communities of color, can you walk us through how decades of disinvestment in housing, transportation, schools and other resources, a lot of the built environment that you mentioned, are linked with COVID rates in these communities?
Jennifer Roberts
Sure. I think I often like to reference the phrase, "your zip code is a better predictor of your health than your genetic code," because that helps to address health disparities, inequities, all that are related to racism within this country. And so I think a way to understand that is to kind of look at all of our determinants. So if we take COVID-19 as an example, and we think about, okay, we're born with a set of individual health determinants that are related to our genetic predisposition, generational influences, so the health, you know, the fetal health that you had when your mom was carrying you and some of the other things that were going on before you even come, they're just set, you know, and they can also influence our health outcomes and our behaviors. So if you grew up in a household where everyone eats from the garden outside and sits around the table at dinner time, and then the same goes for family walk, then you'll have certain behaviors that you carry on, or you have maybe different behaviors, but I like to think about these individual determinants, and how they affect what we eat and in our movement, and all of those can have outcomes that can be good or bad. And so when we talk about COVID, we saw that certain health outcomes, pre-existing health outcomes for putting people at like a higher risk for severe COVID-19. And so, we were thinking, Okay, some of those were like obesity, diabetes, and when we think about that we're like, okay, is it all genetic? No, that's not the whole story. There's all of the social determinants of health. So everything from like, we mentioned, the built environment, so the type of house and neighborhood we live in, whether or not the neighborhood has public transportation, the food environment, so you live in a food swamp? Do you live in a food desert? Or do you have grocery stores or farmers market to get healthy foods? your educational environment, which is very much linked to the neighborhood environment: So do you have safe, you know, highly resourced schools that are available? The social environment, you know, are you living in a way that you know, the social and cultural systems in which you navigate at home, at work, at school, you know, are they kind of toxic to you? And so, there's other ones, you know, as well, but a lot of these affect our health. But we have to think about all of these environmental silos, and then the individual determinants that were within the silo, and how they were put into motion by the laws, the policies, regulations –most, if not all, stemmed from racist, and discriminatory ideologies, such as like redlining and other aspects. And so when we look at these determinants, like, overtake one, for example, parks. That's one determinant that would be code in our built environment. And we saw that during the pandemic, not everybody had access to parks, not everyone had access to green space, even though CDC told us in the summer of 2020, "hey, everyone go out to the park, that's the best way to keep safe." But we saw that there was some disparities regarding that. And the parks, and the disparity of parks, are related to the residential segregation, which is related to redlining. And so it's this kind of ongoing thing. And so you can't just look at one thing and say, "Oh, that's why they're inactive," or "oh, that's why they eat unhealthy." You know, it's a constellation of all of these social determinants that really take the forefront over the individual determinants that we are born with. So COVID-19 was one thing in the last two years that I think opened a lot of people's eyes to kind of structural racism and a lot of these institutions and policies. And the other one, of course, was Black men dying at the hands of police. And you started, you have an upcoming paper that starts boldly with I can't breathe, and it goes on to list men and recent Black men in recent years who have said these words before dying at the hands police. So I know this is a large paper and covers a lot of ground. And you mentioned Trayvon Martin and Ahmaud Arbery. Earlier, but can you outline the connection you make between current police brutality and environmental injustice, and maybe give us some of the solutions or paths forward that you offer in the paper? Yes, definitely. We wanted this paper to be very bold. And actually, we just got the email today that it was accepted. So we're really excited, we're really excited that it's going to be coming out next month. And I knew – even before the paper was written– I wanted "I can't breathe" to be in the title because I started thinking about [how] that can be interpreted in so many ways. Yes, it can be the "I can't breathe" that Eric Garner said, or George Floyd. But it also can mean "I can't breathe" because I have air pollution around my house, or, you know, I'm around all this toxic kind of air and these, these impurities. And so we wanted to write this manuscript, because definitely of the recent incidents of police brutality. But we also wanted to kind of relate that to the historical and current policies related to a wide range of environmental hazards that many BIPOC folks have been exposed to, whether that's physical, mental, or cultural toxicities, that kind of create these unbreathable, unlivable communities. And so in order to make this connection, we kind of walked the reader through the kind of the evolution of racism within this country. Starting first the scientific racism and pseudo scientific conception of white biological superiority, along with the kind of this medicalization of Blackness in order to legitimize slavery, and then just kind of propagate this anti-black racism. And so in that first part of the paper, we talk about systems of oppression, whether it's sharecropping or black codes, and maybe how lack Codes for many Black Americans, specifically Black men, were used as a tool to have this forced manual labor through this convict leasing. So you're like, "Okay, you've been emancipated and you're free, but I'm going to convict you for just walking here, I'm going to convict you for being a vagrant. So now I'm going to still get that free labor from you." But many of these men who were working this convict leasing were exposed to numerous environmental contaminants because they were working on the railroads, and they were working in the mines. So we kind of make that connection there. And then we advanced a discussion to talk about modern racism, and we use the COVID 19 pandemic, as a way to exemplify a current day connections of racism, how, and again, you know, we'll highlight examples of residential segregation, and many of the social determinants and inequities. And then we pivot backwards in this kind of modern racism discussion, and show parallels between the 1918 influenza pandemic, and then the Red Summer of 1919 that occurred during that time, along with today's pandemic, and the racial reckoning of summer of 2020. So we wanted to show like those parallels, and then we close out our review with a talk and a discussion on environmental racism. And we reference a quote from Dr. Deborah Robinson, which she says "environmental racism, therefore, is a new manifestation of historic racial oppression, it is merely an old wine in a new bottle." And I love that because it kind of just talks about a lot of what we had alluded to in the beginning of the paper – that racism, a lot of what you see is just kind of repackaged – and then we end out, you know, the paper with the whole phrase of I can't breathe, and speak of the many forms of environmental racism, how it goes beyond just, you know, pollutants in the air, or water or food, and many different environmentalism, and it spans all of these, these dimensions, including police brutality. And so we were talking about solutions. And we actually borrowed some of the work from Heather McGee, and how this false zero-sum narrative needs to be eliminated. And if we try to achieve environmental justice, it really, you know, helps everybody you know, if we understand, acknowledge that we need to have this anti-racist existence in society, it will have benefits not only for the people who have been disenfranchised, but for everyone.
Brian Bienkowski
And building off that a little bit. What are, I want to know what you're optimistic about? So you touched on some solutions there some framing that would be helpful for the research. But were just in general, broadly, even beyond that, where do you find hope and inspiration these days?
Jennifer Roberts
I do find... I am I optimistic, but sometimes I can be very realistic. What am I pessimistic, but I am optimistic, literally for the future. That may sound kind of hokey, but it's like, I think the summer of 2020, with the protests, and then also with this pandemic, it's opened the eyes for so many people who either didn't want to see things or just had their eyes closed. And I think for a lot of people, when their eyes were opened, it created this fire in their belly. And this is especially true, I think, for a lot of the younger generations. And I think that gives me optimism, because I think they can take the baton and help us move forward to this anti-racist society that I had mentioned. And the other thing I think, that gives me hope for the future is – and it's kind of selfish, because I am at public health –bBut I think that although public health practice, literally through the lens of this pandemic has been kind of dragged through the mud a little bit, I think, actually, for a lot of people, people now have a higher appreciation for public health, and even a better understanding of what it does. Because for so long people were like, "Wait, is that people who pick up our trash or what?", think how it's all of these things. Now, I think every single person knows what epidemiology is in this world now. And so I get stuck by the fact that there's a higher appreciation, maybe got more kids who might want to go in public health, because they're seeing all these different things that you can do. And so that gives me hope as well, because I think a lot of people were like, "wow, they got this vaccine together quite quickly. And wow, this is going to help me," like all these connections. And so that kind of gives me hope as well, too.
Brian Bienkowski
So before we get to some fun stuff, I have one more question about you mentioned kind of the younger generation and I wanted to talk about your strategies for mentoring some of these up-and-coming researchers specifically how maybe your approach to mentoring is different than how you were mentored.
Jennifer Roberts
Yeah, so it's a little bit different. So the approach I use for mentoring is, I really try to mentor the entire person, and not just the student identity. And so what I mean is sometimes they'll come in, and we'll we'll talk about their life. We'll talk about, you know, I won't try to be intrusive, but I open the door to say like, how's things going, you know, and if they want to just try to divulge some of that, I let them do that, and they feel comfortable, because they have lives outside of being a student. And, and I think, you know, by kind of getting an understanding of who they are, I can really kind of tap in to a better understanding of what influences their research, or what kind of drives them or what they find passions about. So I really try to mentor the whole person. And it's a little different than how I was mentored, because my mentors were a little bit more hands off with regard to that type of mentorship, it was very focused on the scholarship and being a student, but I still did have good relationships with them, like, you know, I was able to see them outside of the of their career. So for example, we had dinner parties or barbecues, so I was able to see them as a whole person. But in terms of them, like mentoring all the other parts of me outside of the scholarship, it wasn't quite the same way as I do it now.
Brian Bienkowski
I really liked that. I wish I would have had that. And also the idea of just taking the extra moment to ask how people are doing and acknowledging the fact that there are things outside the classroom, because I'm sure you're a very busy person. So you know, good on you for going that extra mile and making people feel comfortable.
Jennifer Roberts
Yeah. Yeah. So I am sorry, no, it just feels good to be able to kind of know who the person is beyond the student.
Brian Bienkowski
Yeah, it's good to make time for our relationships. And it's so easy to say, throw up your hands and say, I'm busy nowadays, because we all we all are. So I'm really glad to hear that. So Jennifer, I'm trying something new, you are the very first person I'm trying this with, because I heard this on a different podcast, and I thought it was kind of fun. It is just three rapid fire questions. And you can just answer with one word or a phrase and we can move on to the next one. So when I am not working, I am most likely
Jennifer Roberts
daydreaming, couldn't hurt, so
Brian Bienkowski
if I can, I'm surprised to hear that actually. I have to. Hello, hello, fellow introvert. If I could meet one person, alive or deceased, it would be
Jennifer Roberts
Maya Angelou.
Brian Bienkowski
Nothing makes me laugh harder than
Jennifer Roberts
literally every moment of a girl's trip with my travel girls. I literally just came back from a girls trip this past Sunday, Saturday and Sunday. And I think I got stomach cramps the whole time laughting.
Brian Bienkowski
That's excellent. So Jennifer, this has been so much fun. I've really learned a lot. And I'm fascinated by your research. And it's really near and dear to my heart. So thank you so much. And my last question is, what is the last book that you read for fun?
Jennifer Roberts
Well, I would have to say it's weird. I've read a lot of stuff that may not seem fun, but one of them was a book called "Black Nature." And it's kind of like this collection of poetry and different prose about nature. And it's nice because it goes across time, and current day, historically, and so it's just kind of a nice little way to escape a little bit.
Brian Bienkowski
Excellent. Well, Jennifer, thank you so much for your time today. There's been a whole lot of fun.
Jennifer Roberts
It's been fun. Thank you, Brian.
Brenda Trejo Rosas joins the Agents of Change in Environmental Justice podcast to discuss how public health can move beyond treating race as a mere data point.
Trejo Rosas is a PhD Candidate in the Environmental and Occupational Health Department at The George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health, and a senior Agents of Change fellow. She also talks about different forms of environmentalism, the power of mentors, and her research on healthcare workers during COVID-19.
The Agents of Change in Environmental Justice podcast is a biweekly podcast featuring the stories and big ideas from past and present fellows, as well as others in the field. You can see all of the past episodes here.
Listen below to our discussion with Trejo Rosas, and subscribe to the podcast at iTunes, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Transcript
Brian Bienkowski
All right, I am super happy to be joined by Brenda Trejo Rosas. Brenda, how are you?
Brenda Trejo Rosas
I'm doing well. It's so good to be here and see you, Brian.
Brian Bienkowski
So I wanted to start. As I said, I had the good fortune to work with you with our first cohort. And your essay ended up being one of my favorites from that cohort. And that's like picking a child, I guess. But it really, it was just a really nice piece. And I wanted to start there because it talked, you spoke briefly about some of your upbringing, and I wanted to quote it. So in the essay you wrote: "an abundance of family practices connected me to others and the environment, as a young child, my great uncle would solicit my help to shell corncobs for tortilla nixtamal," – I'm probably pronouncing that wrong– "passing on the cultural, ecological knowledge of Mesoamerica. My parents built a well to collect rainwater for home use, connecting me to vital elements." So I really liked this painting a picture of kind of early connections to the environment, to people, to family. So from that starting point, can you talk about this upbringing and how it shaped your decisions to pursue a career examining health and the environment?
Brenda Trejo Rosas
We are farmworkers. And we come from this small town, and I think I've mentioned it in the blog, it's called Zimapán Hidalgo, in Mexico, and that city is historically a mining town. And if you want to understand the history of the town too, it was colonized by Spain. And so there's still a lot of indigenous people there. And so we have a lot of those indigenous practices. Moving from that, there's a lot of like things, recognizing that, you know, my grandparents and my parents and my great grandparents spoke their indigenous language, I had a nickname in their indigenous language, and they just did things differently. And we had land, or the family had land and farms and animals. But that changed drastically too because of drought, you know? there was less water as the decades went by. And so that influenced my family to come to the States.
Brian Bienkowski
And another thing you mentioned in the essay was how environmentalism was framed as you got older, you know, getting past some of your childhood and some of these experiences with questionable folks like John Muir, who has kind of a racist past or, you know, just seeing it all be expensive outdoor gear and white people out hiking as the kind of model of environmentalism. So, can you talk about how this was at odds with your experience and maybe some of the environmentalists that you do look up to and drive your work?
Brenda Trejo Rosas
Yeah, I think that was super at odds with my experience because just with my family, we spend a lot of time outside, you know? it doesn't have to be outdoors, we just call it outside. Like going to college undergrad, a lot of people taking these hikes but you had to have all this fancy gear and shoes. And I didn't really understand that. And I was like, "Oh, is this the barrier to go to this hike out here?" And then I learned it doesn't have to be like that, you know? you can have very simple things to go out there. Yeah, some of the equipment is helpful, but it's not necessary. And I think in my... I appreciate my department and I learned so much from it. But I think there wasn't an emphasis of other environmentalists outside of American environmentalism, except they would call it southern environmentalism. Yeah, they included I think, like even the Chipko movement in India. I think the environmentalists that I look up to are, first and foremost, my family.
Brian Bienkowski
So I've been asking all of the fellows what is the defining moment or event that shaped your identity. So this could be personal, professional, just something that stands out in your mind that was a lightbulb moment of helping to kind of shape who you are.
Brenda Trejo Rosas
There's many, of course. One that comes to mind right now is more of a relationship. And that relationship was my English teacher / literature teacher in high school –I'm used to calling everybody a professor, she wasn't a professor– my high school teacher, Miss Courtney Morgan, she's amazing. This was in Idaho Falls, Idaho, Skyline High School, shout out to them, shout out to. She was also the advisor of our newspaper, the West Side Story. And she was amazing. Actually, I met her through my older sister. When she was in high school and I was in junior high, she would stay late for late nights. And so I'd have to walk over there and be like, "Come on, let's go home." And that's how I met [her], this way. She was like, "Oh, who's this young person?" And maybe that's when she started recruiting me into the newspaper. But she was amazing. She, and she agreed with this. Unfortunately, Miss Morgan passed away in early 2020. Now that I reflect on it, she had a great impact in my life that I didn't even realize she was having at the time. And she did this to so many of us. I think she, one of the things is like she saw us, she heard us, she saw us and she gave us opportunities. And she let us develop our voices by giving us the newspaper. So what I did in the newspaper was [that] I was the Spanish page editor. And at that time, we were the only high school newspaper with a Spanish page. And so we would do it bilingual. So that was really cool. Because I didn't have any other space to be myself, you know?
Brian Bienkowski
Yeah, what a touching relationship. It's amazing how much of an influence a good teacher can have. And they're just such under-appreciated pillars of society. So thanks so much for sharing that. And so now speaking of where you're at today, so you're focusing on... you're a PhD candidate looking at disparities in environmental and occupational health. So tell me a little bit about [that]. We're going to dig into some of the research that you've been involved in lately, but just kind of give us what your focus is on and why this field?
Brenda Trejo Rosas
Okay, yeah, I think, definitely folks should read my paper that I wrote for Agents of Change, because I think that'll delve into it in terms of why did I decided to go into this field and it has to do with learning about a toxic waste dump being builtin Zimapán Hidalgo, Mexico, where my family is from. And it was built without the consent of the community, they faced repression for it, and we didn't want that in the community. And so I wanted to learn, you know, like, how can people hear our voices? And then I reached out to the folks engaged in the movement, and I was like, “Hey, I'm out in Idaho. How can I help you all from here?,” they're like, "well, Brenda, you can start by figuring out how the US deals with their toxic waste. Because I don't think what's being done here is the way that they would do it there, you know? can you find out what regulations they have?" And at that point, I was, like, 18 years old in undergrad. I had no idea, you know? I didn't know where to look or anything. And so that's why I started exploring environmental studies trying to learn as much as I could. And I was reflecting on that. And actually, today, I could! I could probably figure out where to look, who to ask, I have mentors, and I could also be like, "you know what? actually, in the US they do violate people's [rights] – we actually don't, we don't have a right to a clean, safe environment." So I would say they would violate that, but we don't have that right legally, you know? um, so yeah, that's why I went into it. And so yeah, I am proud of myself and the relationships that have gotten me to here.
Brian Bienkowski
That leads me nicely into the next question. So you were recently a senior author on a paper called "Pervasive structural racism and environmental epidemiology," which kind of speaks to this body of literature that you were just mentioning. So you're now part of that, of course. And you wrote, one of the lines was, "health research reduces race to a mere data point, and avoids the social dimensions of health, and thus fails to improve population health for all." So I think that one line summed up a lot of the paper for my small brain, the non-scientists brain, and I really liked it. So can you talk about this issue, and maybe some of the solutions that you and your co-authors put forward to not have this be ignored? And not have this be the case in health research?
Brenda Trejo Rosas
This article also came out of the COVID, 19 pandemic, and she given me space in her lab to voice what I was feeling. They're like, "No, we can't keep this going and stuff." And so this paper comes out of that. And the lab and everybody, they're amazing. So, yeah, I like that sentence, it talks about, you know, it's something I remember actually asking one of my professors in a data analysis class, you know, like, "I don't understand, we're using race as a categorical variable. But race is a social construct. So what does this tell us? like, is there something biological? I don't understand why are we using it like this?" And she… I don't remember like what they answered, but I wasn't content with the answer. And I think it continues on. Also, you can look at a lot of literature in environmental health where white is the norm, the default. Even if you look at race as a categorical variable, you have all these different races/ethnicities also, and there can be a mix of them. But one that you're definitely sure to find in that mix is white. And other ones can actually be "non white," you know? so like, Okay, what is the default here? but rarely, actually, yeah, very rarely, you'll have people explain... Actually, I can't think of a public health journal, but that doesn't matter, because I don't know everything, right? But most of them don't tell you how they're using race, you know? It's like, "oh, we measured race." Okay. And so I'm like, "Okay, so, alright, you're measuring it. But what's it a proxy for? What is it a proxy for? What are you? What does it tell you?" And that was never answered in my classes. So if we're going to use it, and we do see disparities, you know, differences when you're looking at things through different races. But that's not the whole story, you know, and it's like super simplified, and unfortunately, because of the history of the US, and a lot of medical history too, people don't understand it either, [people] that are using it. But most of the times they think there's biological reasons, you know, that, “Oh, because you're this race, you're going to have worst health outcomes” and stuff like that, but it doesn't work like that. RaceCISM is very real, it's a system, it doesn't have to be individual. There's a structural system that shapes the reality of many people in this country specifically, and I'm pretty sure around the world, and that impacts your health. To me, it's very, it's kinda like, it's just walking, right? Because it's part of my life and my experience and my community's experience, you know? And now I'm in the position where I'm trying to get other folks to explain it, to understand it. I think it can make people uncomfortable. What I see is people, many people, not all people, of course, are not comfortable with being wrong, you know? like, wrong is like the worst thing you could be, you know? and wrong means that you're learning, and wrong doesn't define your character. And you can change after that. We should always be learning and changing. Our culture is always doing that, you know? the planet is always doing that. So I think there needs to be like more humility, and accountability, and more acceptance of the learning process, you know? we're not always going to be right. And so okay, we're doing it this way, let's be accountable, know that that has had an impact, and let's move forward. But genuinely move forward to change how we address racism in the field and other systems of oppression.
Brian Bienkowski
That's true for research, it's true for journalism. You get people that have... part of what you said is true on the individual level, just people not wanting to be wrong, not wanting to change. But it's also true on a systems level. Where, you know, the way I think of media a lot, the way media has operated for decades, which is how they operated, and [they're like] "we know how to do this," [they'd say] "well you worked at a newspaper, you know the structure." But you know, now people are saying, "Well, hey, maybe that's not enough," you know, now we're in this age where facts don't matter, and post truth and all that, so journalism needs to change, we need to adapt. And research [is] the same thing, you did the same, not you, but the broader you, the field, did the same thing for so many decades of "this is how we research, these are the data points we look at, we spit out a study, we get a grant, we get tenure, we go on with our lives." And so to change that is difficult. But you know, I know folks like you are pushing the change and changing a system obviously, is a challenge.
Brenda Trejo Rosas
It happens though. I think it reminds me of... one of my majors in undergrad was cultural anthropology. And so in the courses that I took, we had to learn the history about the field. And they had what they called "armchair anthropologists," where they literally sat on what they describe as the veranda, like anthropologists, and watched the other people. So there was a differentiation between people and other, you know? and I know people use, like, "armchair epidemiologist" or something, but I don't know if they're aware that that was used, well I don't know, but it was used in anthropology to describe those anthropologists. And so the anthropologists had to sit down, you know, they came up as a field, you know? they came up with new methods that they use, and I think some of those methods could be very useful in epidemiology. For example, understanding your positionality and self-reflexivity, you know? like, you're not just a researcher that is researching. Who you are, how systems of power and oppression influence you and how people engage with you, is going to inform your research, you know? and so anthropologists have the practice of right at the beginning, you know, like, it's kind of like, what do they call it? Disclaimer? I don't know. [It's similar to] what they do in public health with conflict of interest, you know, it's kind of their version of conflict of interest – our version is weak, I think – where they talk about, like, This is who I am, these are my identities, and that's how that could have influenced my relationships with participants, or studying this, you know? but it's like a strength and a weakness, you know? and so you just put it forward. So, I think, knowing about that history, about how a whole field could change, you know? gives me hope that public health and environmental health, environmental epi can change as well.
Brian Bienkowski
Excellent. Yeah, I totally agree. And I'm glad to hear a little bit of optimism because it does seem like there are some cracks in the foundation. And maybe it's just the people I'm speaking to and around, but it seems like there's people trying to shake the system for the better. And this study was not the only thing that I saw you've worked on recently. You were part of, speaking of COVID, you were part of the COVID-19 healthcare worker survey. I mean, we've all seen what's going on with healthcare workers the last few years. I know, I have multiple health care workers in my family and my partner's family, and what they've gone through the last few years is nothing short of traumatic in just about every case. So tell me about the survey. What did you ask, what did you find out?
Brenda Trejo Rosas
I do have a connection with healthcare workers, you know? my sisters are in health care, they live in different states. And I just, I think at the beginning of the pandemic, my mentors in Environmental and Occupational Health have trained me well, to understand what PPE is – personal protective equipment – , and the hierarchy of controls, you know? of what interventions can be used in a certain context. And seeing that healthcare workers didn't have this PPE to protect them just frightened me, you know? and I wanted my sisters and other health care workers and other family members to be safe and they weren't. I was hearing all these stories about how some employers didn't believe in COVID-19 or retaliated, because they wanted to advocate for themselves and use PPE. And it was different all over the map, actually, because there wasn't a federal response. So I know, like, one of my sisters is in a state where they, from the get-go, were protecting their health care workers the best that they could, including providing PPE, and using telemedicine, if that was feasible. And then another sister, that was not the case, you know? and she didn't learn about some opportunities until later. So yeah, and then I was like, "Okay, well, we need to find out..." I talked to Dr. David Michaels, and I'm like, "Hey, I'm very concerned about health care workers, and how can we find out you know, how many of them are getting COVID-19?" and all these things. And so he suggested places that I should look and that were reporting like COVID-19 cases, and none of them... There were actually some state departments, early on into the pandemic, health departments that were reporting by occupation and reporting health care workers. Of course, these were under reported, but some of them had [this data] others didn't. And so I think, from the beginning, and from, like, my training that I have in public health, I'm like, "Oh, it would be important and useful to do this." But it wasn't being done. And the stories of healthcare workers weren't being told. And there wasn't a place I could go to that was reporting on, you know, are they getting PPE? Are they being trained on how to use PPE? What are they being told? Or in terms of like, COVID-19? What do they think, you know, what is their experience? And so, with Dr. David Michaels, we and other folks at GW and and other folks that Dr. Michaels knows, that works with workers, healthcare workers; I think some unions also, so they represent the voice of these workers. We came up with this survey, and it's completely anonymous. And what we found, I don't have the report in front of me, but we could share the report later. But in general, there were, there was... I think, for me, one of the most powerful results from the study was the voices of the health care workers because there was a space where we asked them, you know, to share about their experience. And they did, you know? and even going through the responses can be traumatic in terms of them being made fun of, being retaliated against for advocating for themselves, not having a space to share what's going on. I know there were some healthcare workers of color who mentioned that health care workers of color were less likely to have PPE. And then also there was a hierarchy in terms of like, maybe doctors would have more access to PPE than other folks who work in the healthcare setting, like, folks that – I'm not a person that works in the healthcare setting so I don't remember the name– but I think they're transporters, they transport the patients, they would be less likely to have PPE. Or some folks with medical degrees wouldn't see the patients and would have nurses see the patients instead. So yeah, there were a lot of things that don't seem right and seem influenced by power, you know, who has power in this context? And how are they using that power? Now, there were employers and other people who do have power, who may have higher power through higher educational attainment, who did advocate for their workers, you know? and so some of the health care workers share that as well. So we did come out with a report. I encourage people to look at it. And it's on Excuse me. It's so unfortunate, that is still the case, we're still not listening to health care workers.
Brian Bienkowski
Before I get to my last question. My second to last one is, you talked about this a little bit before about some of the ways you're optimistic about the field, you know, some directions we can go. I just wonder if you could just expand about that. What are you optimistic about when you think about the field of environmental health and justice? What are some things you're seeing, people you're watching? What are some of the things that give you hope?
Brenda Trejo Rosas
Brian, I think the Agents of Change in Environmental Justice program for sure. I think that is a rock for my hope right now in the field, in terms of learning about the work that other scientists are doing to address environmental injustice in our world. So yeah, I think that's super important and it gives me hope, it makes me feel less alone. And it helps me see that there's a lot of relationships that might not be highlighted elsewhere, and research of folks that are doing numerous of things to make the field and address environmental injustice, make the field better and address environmental injustice. So yeah, I think that's definitely one. The other is through social media and following some of these folks, I learned about other people too, you know? and their research and so that gives me a lot of hope. Like I think about Dr… I think, I may pronounce it wrong. So bad. But Dr. Chandra Jackson, and she studies health inequities in the environment. And she came to GW where I'm a candidate and talked about sleep disparities and how their environment impacts sleep, then she did like a whole history and she used terms that... she used racism, you know? she used systems of power and privilege to explain what's going on, to contextualize how that's impacting sleep disparities. And so she, to me, she is a powerhouse, you know? it's super competent and knows what she's talking about and explains it. And I envision moving forward that folks will be using the terminology that she's using and doing research the way that she's doing research to address environmental injustice. Yeah.
Brian Bienkowski
Great. Well, thanks so much for that answer. I promise listeners that we do not ask, I do not ask that question so people say Agents of Change, but it is really an honor that you do mention it. And you know, for me, too, it is a source of optimism for me too. I've covered science as a journalist for more than a decade, and just seeing the breadth of people out there, who are doing science outside of the same people you see in the media being quoted all the time, is a source of optimism. And I totally agree. So Brenda, we've reached the end, and I've been asking everybody this question, what is the last book that you read for fun?
Brenda Trejo Rosas
There's two.
Brian Bienkowski
There's two. All right.
Brenda Trejo Rosas
One is called "Trejo." So it's by Danny Trejo. I don't know if you're familiar with Danny Trejo?
Brian Bienkowski
Everybody's familiar with him even if they know it or not!
Brenda Trejo Rosas
Yeah, he's amazing! And so his book is really awesome too, you know? it talks about trials and tribulations in his life, and how he has used that to make change and to help other people, you know? and he focuses a lot on relationships and nourishing those relationships. And yeah, it's just an amazing book. I actually listened to the audiobook, and it's read by him. So it's really cool to have to be listening to Danny Trejo narrate his book. And then the other one that I just finished also an audiobook, I'm very into audiobooks, because I like to listen and move around. Is... what's it called? It's... I think it's "White tears and brown scars, how white feminism betrays women of color." And so, yeah, that one is a really good book, too. It can be heavy, but for me, I found it very validating about my experiences as a woman of color. And hearing about, you know, why some of the things that we experience happen historically. And so it just really opened up my eyes about these things. And I think for anything to improve, we have to bring to light some things that aren't working. And so I think that book helps bring that to light, you know? And, yeah, so I hope that's a hopeful note, Brian.
Brian Bienkowski
yes, yes, definitely. You know, I was listening to a podcast, I want to say it was over last summer. Last summer I was listening to and Danny Trejo was on talking about his book. And for those who don't know, if you just do a quick search of Danny Trejo, you will know who he is because you've seen him in a zillion movies often playing a bad guy. But I really want to check that out! both of those books sound really great, and I appreciate you sharing those.