Black Bodies, Black Health

Perry N. Halkitis, Ph.D., dean of the Rutgers School of Public Health, says this is a “different landscape” than what it was four years ago. “It is not surprising to see COVID-19 dropping on the list, given the effective prevention strategies rolled out by public health,” he says. But Halkitis also says that “chronic disease continue to be part of the large constellation of diseases that affect Americans,” as infectious diseases drop. Read the article in Prevention.

Featured in Business Insider, Yana Rodgers, director of the Center for Women and Work at Rutgers University, and Black Bodies, Black Health researcher says women are more likely to be hired over men in six-figure roles, "We believe it's diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives at work," said She also polled her peers at the university. They agreed: the data could indicate that efforts to correct gaps in gender representation at the top of businesses are working.

For decades after the United States became a nation, abortion was legal until fetal movement could be felt, usually well into the second trimester. Movement, known as quickening, was the threshold because, in a time before pregnancy tests or ultrasounds, it was the clearest sign that a woman was pregnant. Before that point, “women could try to obtain an abortion without having to fear that it was illegal,” said Johanna Schoen, a professor of history at Rutgers University, and Black Bodies, Black Health Researcher. 

Congratulations to Charles Senteio, associate professor of Library and Information Science at the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers-New Brunswick for being honored with the Public Good Pinnacle Award by Rutgers University Equity and Inclusion.

The award recognizes outstanding university collaborations in partnership with, and for the benefit of the community. 

Read the recent NJ Spotlight News article which features Perry Halkitis, BBBH Steering Committee member and Dean and Professor of Biostatistics and Urban-Global Public Health at the School of Public Health; founder and director of the Center for Health, Identity, Behavior & Prevention Studies (CHIBPS)

Read the toolkit - developed by Alexandria Bauer and the The REACH (Racial Equity, Advocacy, and Community Health) Alliance at Rutgers University Center of Alcohol & Substance Use Studies - designed to be a resource for mental health service providers who are interested in more effectively engaging with diverse clients in order to promote culturally relevant mental health care.

The New Jersey Council for the Humanities (NJCH) awarded the top prize in the inaugural Stanley N. Katz Prize for Excellence in Public Humanities to a multimedia project headed by Dr. Anita Bakshi (Rutgers Department of Landscape Architecture) and co-created with the Ramapough Lunaape Nation Turtle Clan.  The award-winning project, “The Ramapough and the Ringwood Mines Superfund Site – History, Culture, Education, and Environmental Justice,” was recognized at NJCH’s 50th Anniversary Gala. 

Born out of a landscape architecture course taught by Assistant Professor of Teaching, and BBBH Seed Grantee Anita Bakshi, the Our Land, Our Stories project brings together the Department of Landscape Architecture and the Ramapough Lunaape Nation to focus on environmental justice advocacy. In Spring 2022 their team received a grant to create a garden on campus to celebrate the continued presence of Indigenous communities in our state. Watch a recap of the event held at Rutgers Gardens.

Read the first published article in the Journal of Community Health detailing the study by Mei Fu and Wanda Williams of a novel multi-level intervention to reduce breast cancer screening disparity in Black women who live in an environmental justice community. The proposed project serves as the platform to garner talents from multi-disciplinary researchers to target on the multi-level barriers to breast cancer screening disparities.

As a pilot project, The TULiP  digital platform will be developed to connect Black members of the healthcare force with the Black community. TULiP would begin as an index of Black physicians in New Jersey. Eventually, other healthcare providers and initiatives would be added. Involving Black community members in the development of this platform is essential for developing a racially and culturally sensitive understanding of a patients’ needs and improving the quality of healthcare provided. 

Written in collaboration with the Ramapough Lunaape Nation Turtle Clan, Our Land, Our Stories tells the story of racial and environmental injustice. It documents contested narratives around the site’s contamination by Ford, leading to its listing as the Ringwood Mines Superfund Site. Unearthing stories that have been buried alongside the dangerous chemicals that remain deep in the soil, the project counters the processes of erasure that have made the continuing presence of Indigenous peoples invisible to many.

Read the newly published paper by the Rutgers Center for Women and Work, including Labor Studies and Employment Relations Professor and BBBH Seed Grantee Yana van der Meulen Rodgers in the Forum for Social Economics Journal. 

The paper examines changes in occupational crowding of immigrant women in frontline industries in the United States during the onset of COVID-19, and we contextualize their experiences against the backdrop of broader race-based and gender-based occupational crowding.

The paper by Black Bodies, Black Health Project Leads Michelle Stephens and Enobong (Anna) Branch, and BBBH Project Manager Candace King is scheduled to be published in the Oxford University Press Culture of Health Series in late 2023.