2019 Early Stage Urban Research Awards

Building Community and Health Equity through Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and Financial Services
PI: Lucy Marcil, MD MPH; Assistant Professor, Department of Pediatrics, School of Medicine
Co-PI: Yoonsook Ha, PhD; Assistant Professor, School of Social Work

Marcil and Ha will implement and evaluate a service intervention to promote health and health equity by increasing financial stability in the highest poverty neighborhoods in Boston. They will partner with the Epiphany School to provide free tax preparation and financial capabilities services and examine the impact of such services on receipt of the EITC, family financial stability, and health.

The Impact of Tourism on Environmental Sound Levels in Urban and Park Environments
PI: Erica Walker, MSc, ScD; Department of Environmental Health, School of Public Health
Co-PI: Richard Primack, PhD; Professor, Department of Biology

Walker and Primack will study the impacts of tourism on a city’s environmental soundscape to better understand how the effects of tourism affect urban areas compared to highly-visited park areas.

Community Engagement to Explore Heat Exposure for Urban-Dwelling Older Adults in Boston
PI: Leila Heidari, PhD student; Department of Environmental Health, School of Public Health
Co-PI: Patrick L. Kinney, ScD; Professor, Department of Environmental Health, School of Public Health

Heidari and Kinney seek to understand the heat exposure-related needs and experiences of older adults living in Boston, MA and will use a participatory action method, Photovoice, in combination with exposure and biometric measurements, to document and communicate participant exposures, experiences, and needs around heat events.

Understanding Open-Air Drug Markets Configuration
PI: Andrea Beltran-Lizarazo, PhD Student; Department of Sociology

Beltran-Lizarazo will explore the development of open-air drug markets in Colombia, where actors in the drug trade exert territorial control over central areas within cities. Specifically, Beltran Lizarazo will study the case of San Bernardo, in downtown Bogota, to understand what mechanisms benefited drug trade expansion and why the community ceded its neighborhood to the actors involved.
Beltran Lizarazo seeks her findings can provide a basis for the comparative examination of open-air narcotic markets and its policy treatment beyond Colombia.

Urban Refuge: Access to Information and Access to Aid for Syrian Refugees in Istanbul
PI: Noora Anwar Lori, PhD; Assistant Professor, International Relations, Frederick S, Pardee School of Global Studies

Lori aims to create a comprehensive database (app and website) to coordinate aid among diverse service providers that seek to target vulnerable populations in dense urban centers. Because information and misinformation are largely shared via word of mouth, text messaging, and social media, most refugees do not use resources available to them. Lori hopes that this database will help close the gap between available aid resources and its utilization of those resources in cities.

Evictions and Substandard Housing in Boston: The Unfulfilled Promises of the Public Health and Legal System
PI: Wendy Heiger-Bernays, PhD; Clinical Professor, Environmental Health, School of Public Health
Co-PI: Ethan Mascoop, MPH, MUA, RS; Adjunct Clinical Instructor, Environmental Health, School of Public Health
Collaborator: Andrea M. Park, JD, MA; Housing and Homelessness Attorney, Massachusetts Law Reform Institute (MLRI)

Heiger-Bernays, Mascoop, and Park will explore the relationship between public health, specifically housing codes, and the legal eviction process, designed in part to address substandard housing.

Locked Out: Examining the Use of Urban Housing Admissions Policies to Systematically Exclude Poor Renters
PI: Megan Smith, MSW, PhD student; School of Social Work
Co-PI: Thomas Byrne, PhD; Assistant Professor, School of Social Work

Motivated by previous research and practice with individuals facing barriers to affordable housing, Smith and Byrne – together with a team of researchers that includes people who have themselves experienced homelessness – will examine how affordable housing providers’ admissions policies create barriers to housing for individuals with criminal records, poor landlord histories, and/or poor credit histories. Specifically, this project will focus on Rhode Island’s affordable housing admissions policies using data from all 39 municipalities.

Constructing City Images through Local Media: An Intermedia Agenda-Setting Analysis of Big Media Data
PI: Lei Guo, Assistant Professor, Division of Emerging Media Studies, College of Communication
Co-PI: Yiyan Zhang, PhD student; Division of Emerging Media Studies, College of Communication

By focusing on the top 30 most populated US cities (including Boston) Guo and Zhang will focus on how local media plays a critical role in communicating the status quo and vision of a city to audiences beyond the city, aiming to critically assess the impact of US local media in influencing the city portrayal in national, as well as international, media.

Urban Policing and Racial Health Inequities
PIs: Julia Raifman, ScD; Assistant Professor, Health Law, Policy & Management, School of Public Health
Co-PI: Michael Ulrich, MPH; Assistant Professor, Health Law, Ethics & Human Rights, Health Law, Policy & Management, School of Public Health
Mentor: Michael Siegel, MD; Professor, Community Health Sciences, School of Public Health

Raifman, Siegel, and Ulrich aim to evaluate the relationship between changes in urban policing and changes in racial health inequities. Through this, they hope to create an impactful database of urban policing policies and to inform police and the public about potential health and well-being implications of racial inequities in arrests.

Congregations in Contested Space: Gentrification and Latinx Churches in East Boston
PI: Jonathan Calvillo, PhD; Assistant Professor, Sociology of Religion, School of Theology

Calvillo aims to understand how Latinx churches in the East Boston area are responding to gentrification, specifically how churches are engaging with the economic restructuring taking places in their surrounding communities.

Dislocated Gods, De-territorialized Bodies: Temples, Space and Social Resilience in Urbanizing China
PI: Robert P. Weller, PhD; Professor, Boston University Department of Anthropology
Co-PI: Keping Wu, PhD; Associate Professor, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University Department of China Studies

Weller and Wu will examine the lives of the resettled people in what used to be five rural townships at the edge of the wealthy city of Suzhou, now living in large, low-end apartment complexes. How are the residents rebuilding social and personal lives in the city?

Partnering with Families with Limited English Proficiency to Promote Language Justice and Equity in Education Settings
PI: Catalina Tang Yan, MS, PhD student; School of Social Work
Co-PI: Linda Sprague Martinez, PhD; Assistant Professor, School of Social Work

In partnership with Loreto Paz Ansaldo, a community interpreter and translator, along with community stakeholders, as well as Massachusetts Advocates for Children, Tang Yan and Martinez hope to promote equity in education settings by seeking to understand the experiences and recommendations of limited English proficiency families whose children are enrolled in Special Education programs

Reducing Identity-Based Harassment for Marginalized Youth: An Evaluation of the Anti-Defamation League’s Peer Leader Program among Urban Youth
PI: Melissa Holt, PhD; Associate Professor, Counseling Psychology and Applied Human Development; Wheelock College of Education and Human Development (WCEDHD)
Co-PIs: Christine Marsico, PhD student; Counseling Psychology, WCEDHD and Jennifer Greif Green, PhD; Associate Professor, Special Education, WCEDHD

In partnership with New England’s Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Holt, Marsico, and Green, will examine the extent to which the ADL’s Peer Training Program, a program that emphasizes ally and bystander behaviors, can serve as a lever for decreasing identity-based bullying and harassment in urban schools, particularly among traditionally marginalized youth.