Digital Commons Network^™

Enemies To Lovers: An Unsuspecting Friendship In The Journey To Save The Endangerment Finding, Sophie Ballah

University of Cincinnati Law Review

No abstract provided.

“The New Normal”: California’S Escalating Wildfire Crisis, Alexandra Vasquez

Student Theses 2015-Present

This paper addresses the current state of California's wildfire epidemic and how the increasing effects of climate change have worsened the fires, harming residents' health and the state's economy. The wildfires are shaped by factors such as climate change, land-use choices, and policy designs. California wildfires have worsened substantially in the 21st century, with the worst burns in the 2020 season setting a record of 4.2 to 4.5 million acres destroyed. Given current policies and the administration's disinterest in combating climate change, understanding wildfire history and data is essential to improving California's wildfire resilience, creating sustainable land management practices, and …

State Climate Superfunds, Rachel Rothschild

Articles

The harmful effects of climate change have already arrived in cities and states across America, with disasters increasing markedly in recent years along with more gradual environmental changes like sea-level rise and drought. To protect populations and natural resources, significant funding will be necessary for preventative measures as well as disaster response.

At present, it is states and ordinary taxpayers who must shoulder the enormous costs and planning for climate adaptation. A number of state legislators, however, have recently proposed enacting new laws that would require the companies who have most profited from fossil fuel usage to assist in funding …

Applications Of Urban Forestry: Advancing Environmental Justice Via Tree Planting In New York City, Newell Alexandra Blanton

Student Theses 2015-Present

NYC’s urban forest is composed of 7 million trees and the infrastructure which supports them. These trees have incredible value in almost every sense of the word; they provide essential ecosystem services such as climate modification and air purification that are otherwise impossible or enormously costly to manage. Contrarily, a lack of tree coverage in an urbanized area can contribute negatively to the health, economics, and overall quality of life for a neighborhood’s residents. This paper analyzes the impact trees have in New York City through a socioeconomic lens by comparing tree metrics and their collective influence in various neighborhoods, …

Long-Range Transport Of Canadian Wildfire Smoke: Public Health And Earth System Impacts, Erica L. Simon

Environmental Studies Senior Theses

In the summer of 2023, Canada experienced an unprecedented wildfire season with total burned area reaching 15 million hectares, doubling the previous record. Notably, smoke plumes from Eastern Canada were transported to the Northeast United States, resulting in record-breaking measures of poor air quality in early June 2023. This thesis employs a multi-method analysis to understand the June 2023 Quebec wildfires, focusing on atmospheric science, public health effects in New York City, and albedo changes on the Greenland ice sheet. Through this analysis, I find record-high monthly mean aerosol optical depth values in June 2023 in three regions– the Northeast …

Breaking Down Black Beauty: Deconstructing Unsustainable Racist Practices In The Beauty Industry, Jaron Givens

Student Theses 2015-Present

The glitter of the beauty industry creates an undeniably attractive fantasy. Cosmetics and dermatology allow for finding a new sense of self through beauty. However, is beauty's fantasy world accessible to everyone, specifically the Black dance community? The beauty industry, historically and presently, has disproportionate effects on people of color communities like the Black dance community. The unsustainable practices and toxic products in the beauty industry hinder the health of Black individuals at different rates than other racial counterparts. There is still work to be done in deconstructing the racist practices of the beauty industry and in facilitating environmentally sustainable …

Breaking Down Black Beauty: Deconstructing Unsustainable Racist Practices Within The Beauty Industry, Jaron Givens

Student Theses 2015-Present

The glitter of the beauty industry creates an undeniably attractive fantasy. Cosmetics and dermatology allow for finding a new sense of self through beauty. However, is beauty's fantasy world accessible to everyone, specifically the Black dance community? The beauty industry, historically and presently, has disproportionate effects on people of color communities like the Black dance community. The unsustainable practices and toxic products in the beauty industry hinder the health of Black individuals at different rates than other racial counterparts. There is still work to be done in deconstructing the racist practices of the beauty industry and in facilitating environmentally sustainable …

Frontier Healthscapes: Competing Narratives Of Disease, Environment, And Wellbeing In Early Minnesota, Aidan Reynolds

Geography Honors Projects

Across settler societies, health narratives were shaped by evolving tensions between lay and expert knowledge, frameworks of disease causation, and perceptions of the environment as both a source of health and a threat. In the decades following Euro-American settlement (1860-1900), Minnesota became a focal point for these debates, with its landscape fostering complex and competing narratives on health, wellbeing, and disease. This paper explores how public health discourse developed in Minnesota through the perspectives of institutions, the public, and economic interests. Combining environmental history with critical discourse analysis of archival materials, this study examines shifts within the Minnesota State Board …

Personal Narrative As Pedagogy: A Model For Socially Responsive Narrative-Based Education In Occupational Therapy, Johnna Belkiewitz, Sally Wasmuth

The Open Journal of Occupational Therapy

The practice of occupational therapy relies on the collection and analysis of life narratives to provide responsive client-centered care. As developing holistic practitioners, occupational therapy students are taught to consider these shared stories within a larger context of historical and societal systems by acknowledging such factors as social determinants of health. Case studies are a frequently used tool to teach these skills; however, evidence supports that the identities of these educational stories’ authors can influence which perspectives are shared and, ultimately, impact developing occupational therapists’ perpetuation of or opposition to existing systems of oppression. Critical Race Theory and qualitative methodology …

Revitalizing Passenger Rail: A Sustainable Solution To Environmental And Public Health Challenges In South Carolina, Benjamin Cochran

Theses and Dissertations

South Carolina, a historic leader in passenger rail, has become a heavily vehicle-dependent state. As the population rapidly grows, so does the number of vehicles, vehicle miles traveled, and vehicle emissions, including the greenhouse gas pollutants carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrous oxide (N2O), and particulate matter (PM2.5), significantly contributing to air pollution and deteriorating health and environmental outcomes. Despite this, mass transit is nonexistent for the three largest cities in South Carolina, Charleston, Columbia, and Greenville, forcing residents and travelers to drive. This study evaluates the feasibility and the environmental, public health, environmental justice, and economic implications of a passenger rail …

An Environmental Vulnerability Index Framework Supporting Targeted Public Health Interventions At The Census Tracts Level., Lauren B. Anderson, Rochelle Holm, Caison Black, Donald J. Biddle, Weihsueh A. Chiu, Aruni Bhatnagar, Ted Smith

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

Abstract

Background

Analyzing and visualizing disparities in environmental risks can help assess place-based vulnerabilities and provide civic leaders and community members with essential data for promoting health equity and informing public health strategies.

Objective

We investigated the adaptation of a previously developed environmental vulnerability index to evaluate the cumulative impact of diverse stressors in Louisville Metro-Jefferson County, KY, with the goal of supporting multi-faceted targeted public health interventions at the census tract level.

Methods

We assessed countywide vulnerability variability using the Toxicological Prioritization Index interface across five domains with 32 publicly available data indicators, and modeled the effects of theoretical …

How Climate Change And Environmental Policies Affect Impoverished Communities, Nicole Skala

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

Climate change is a global problem that affects everyone, but not proportionately. Lower income communities face greater physical and economic impacts, and policies often fail to consider their needs. These communities struggle to adapt and recover from disasters due to limited resources, and they lack access to resilient housing. Major corporations like Exxon and Shell profit while their workers are underpaid for dangerous labor. Historically, regions like rural Appalachia have seen exploitation through industries like coal. People of Color (POC) communities experience environmental racism, suffering greater environmental harm due to systemic neglect. Increasing commodity costs can hurt lower income individuals, …

Beyond Covid: Towards A Transdisciplinary Synthesis For Understanding Responses And Developing Pandemic Preparedness In Alaska, Taylor P. Van Doren, Ryan A. Brown, Guangqing Chi, Patricia Cochran, Katie Cueva, Laura Eichelberger, Ruby Fried, Stacey Fritz, Micah B. Hahn, Ron Heintz, Davin Holen, Andrey N. Petrov

Faculty Publications

Pandemics are regularly occurring events, and there are foundational principles of pandemic preparation upon which communities, regions, states, and nations may draw upon for elevated preparedness against an inevitable future infectious disease threat. Many disciplines within the social sciences can provide crucial insight and transdisciplinary thinking for the development of preparedness measures. In 2023, the National Science Foundation funded a conference of circumpolar researchers and Indigenous partners to reflect on COVID-19-related research. In this article, we synthesise our diverse social science perspectives to: (1) identify potential areas of future pandemic-related research in Alaska, and (2) pose new research questions that …

Environmental Impact Of Water And Air Contaminants On Public Health, Astrid-Ines Foamkom, Luis A. Peña Marquez, Maria Sophia Malbas, Esmeralda Rodriguez, Noe Garza, Ney Alliey-Rodriguez

Research Colloquium

Background: Established literature suggests a strong relationship between exposure to air contaminants and physical health. Similarly, numerous studies have demonstrated the effects of water pollution on public health. Texas denizens are often victims of poor air and water quality, yet there are scant studies that have integrated evidence of health tolls caused by air and water pollution across the state. In this study, we assessed the relationship between particulate matter

Methods: The study used data from the 2018 Medicare and Medicaid report which displayed chronic health conditions across all counties in Texas. Additionally, the study also includes collected data on …

Bridging Silos: Environmental And Reproductive Justice In The Climate Crisis, Sara A. Colangelo

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The climate crisis is a perilous yet underexamined example of the intersection of environmental injustice and reproductive injustice. The physical manifestations of the climate crisis affect key elements of reproductive justice: women’s rights to have children, to not have children, and to parent children in healthy, sustainable communities. Reams of studies document climate disaster-driven gender violence, loss of access to healthcare and reproductive services, as well as direct and deadly health effects of climate change on maternal health, fetal development, infants, and children. Despite these profound impacts, the environmental and reproductive justice movements remain largely siloed, particularly in the legal …

Water Justice And Equity: The Disproportionate Effects Of Pollution On Black, Indigenous, And Other Communities Of Color, Rae Cade

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Access to clean drinking water is a basic human right, regardless of an individual’s background. Yet, discriminatory practices in the United States have disproportionately burdened Black, Indigenous, and other people of color (BIPOC) with contaminated sources of water. Understanding how and why water is disproportionately contaminated in areas with increased diversity, and identifying and targeting areas of environmental injustice, are essential steps for ensuring future water equity. Here, I examine the drivers of inequitable access to clean drinking water within the northeastern United States. In chapter one, I look at the historical drivers of land inequity within the United States. …

Breathing Inequity: A Mixed Method Analysis Of Rubbertown's Air Quality Problem, Mikayla Pitmon

Undergraduate Theses

Louisville Metro Government has a multitude of quantitative data on demographics, health, and air quality in Rubbertown fenceline communities. This study explores how community-level research allows us to have a more robust understanding of the impact of environmental injustice. Spatial data was utilized to map various health variables, zoning, and community spaces relative to Rubbertown chemical facilities. A semi-structured interview was then conducted with a local environmental justice activist to gain a better understanding of their experience and the barriers to environmental justice for the residents of West Louisville. This study improves our understanding of community needs and adds a …

The Persistent Public Health Emergency, Yael Zakai Cannon

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

May 11, 2023 was ostensibly a day of celebration. With infections and deaths from COVID-19 down, the federal government announced the end of the official Public Health Emergency three years after its initial declaration. But the conclusion of the Public Health Emergency also signaled the termination of unprecedented health protection measures—outside the realm of healthcare—such as eviction and utility shutoff moratoria and emergency rental and utility assistance. These COVID-era measures successfully cut eviction filings nationally by more than half and provided people in many jurisdictions with the protections and assistance needed to maintain their electricity, heat, water, and gas. Now …

Indicators Of Community Physical Activity Resources And Opportunities And Variation By Community Sociodemographic Characteristics: A Scoping Review, Ann E. Rogers, Michaela A. Schenkelberg, Peter Stoepker, Danielle Westmark, Deepa Srivastava, David A. Dzewaltowski

Department of Child, Youth, and Family Studies: Faculty Publications

Objective: This scoping review synthesizes studies examining community-level variability in physical activity resource (assets) and opportunity (organized group physical activity services) availability by community sociodemographic characteristics to describe methodologies for measuring resources/opportunities, indicators characterizing availability, and associations between community-level sociodemographic characteristics and availability.

Methods: A systematic search was conducted in MEDLINE, CINAHL, PsycINFO, and Scopus for literature through 2022. Eligible studies quantitatively examined measures of physical activity resource/opportunity availability by community-level racial, ethnic, and/or socioeconomic characteristics within geospatially defined communities. Extracted data included: community geospatial definitions, sociodemographic characteristics assessed, methodologies for measuring and indicators of community physical activity …

Park Use, Urban Environmental Justice, And Place Attachment In Parks In Low-Income Neighborhoods In New York City, Javier Eduardo Otero Peña

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This three-article dissertation brings environmental psychology themes and questions to a large-scale public health research project about a subset of community parks and park renovations in low-income neighborhoods in New York City (NYC). What attributes and perceived aspects of the physical and social environment of parks and their neighborhoods are associated with higher park use? How do residents of gentrifying low-income neighborhoods feel about park renovations that took place in their communities? What can be learned from parks, park renovations and place attachment from exploring user-generated content in the Google Maps platform? Each of the articles presented in this dissertation …

Public Health Impacts And Intra-Urban Forced Displacement Due To Climate Gentrification In The Greater Miami Area—Community Lawyering For Environmental Justice And Equitable Development, Theresa Pinto, Abigail L. Fleming, Sabrina Payoute, Elissa Klein

University of Miami Law Review

Because Miami-Dade County is “ground zero” for such climate effects as sea-level rise and increasingly hazardous, climate-driven Atlantic hurricanes, the coral rock ridge that runs along the Eastern coast of South Florida is a prime target for redevelopment and “climate” gentrification. Through a community and movement lawyering for environmental justice approach, we partnered with local community organizations to contribute to the ongoing work of community-driven equitable development. In partnership, we developed an environmental public health study to understand and document the public health effects on disadvantaged communities in Miami-Dade County from forced intra-urban displacement due to redevelopment that is being …

Machine Learning As A Tool For Early Detection: A Focus On Late-Stage Colorectal Cancer Across Socioeconomic Spectrums, Hadiza Galadima, Rexford Anson-Dwamena, Ashley Johnson, Ghalib Bello, Georges Adunlin, James Blando

Community & Environmental Health Faculty Publications

Purpose: To assess the efficacy of various machine learning (ML) algorithms in predicting late-stage colorectal cancer (CRC) diagnoses against the backdrop of socio-economic and regional healthcare disparities. Methods: An innovative theoretical framework was developed to integrate individual- and census tract-level social determinants of health (SDOH) with sociodemographic factors. A comparative analysis of the ML models was conducted using key performance metrics such as AUC-ROC to evaluate their predictive accuracy. Spatio-temporal analysis was used to identify disparities in late-stage CRC diagnosis probabilities. Results: Gradient boosting emerged as the superior model, with the top predictors for late-stage CRC diagnosis being anatomic site, …

Cost Prohibitive Bonds As Denial Of Justice: Grassroots And Community Organizations’ Due Process Rights, Elizabeth Royal, Aletta Brady

Mitchell Hamline Law Journal of Public Policy and Practice

No abstract provided.

The Once And Future Clean Air Act: Impacts Of The Inflation Reduction Act On Epa's Regulatory Authority, Nicholas Bryner

Journal Articles

The Clean Air Act is one of Congress's greatest success stories. The major piece of legislation, passed in the context of environmental and public health crises, has driven technological change through regulation that has dramatically improved air quality even in a prolonged period of economic growth. In the context of climate change, however, despite many efforts since the 1990s, the Clean Air Act has not proven to be a successful legislative tool. Instead, the Act has faced complex obstacles in the statutory language and a trend in Supreme Court jurisprudence-leading up to and including the June 2022 decision in West …

Poor Water Quality Persists In Diverse Urban Communities, Rae Cade, Danlin Yu, Kyle Whyte, Pankaj Lal, Cortni Borgerson

Department of Earth and Environmental Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

While humans need water to survive, water can also efficiently transmit microbial diseases and heavy metals to consumers. Over 50,000 water violations occurred in 2020 and such burdens were not borne equally amongst consumers. Yet, the factors that drive such variation remain unclear. We examined the interactions between water quality and inherited equity gaps in one of the most diverse urban areas in the United States. We used publicly available drinking water datasets to determine which contaminant was most prevalent between 2010–2020 and who was significantly more likely to be affected by this contamination. We found that a lack of …

From Social To Collective Capital: Factors Behind The Success Of A Covid-19 Task Force, Lauren Mckeague, Sophie G. Wenzel, Robin H. Lemaire

Faculty Publications

Social capital offers an important framework for understanding community disaster preparedness and resiliency at both the individual and community levels. Social capital also offers a lens for understanding interorganizational collaboration, particularly for public health disasters. Yet missing from the literature is an exploration of how social capital at the individual level may develop into collective capital at the group level, to then be leveraged for community public health disaster management. We conducted a mixed-methods case study of an emergent rural task force that formed to manage the COVID-19 pandemic. Using social network and qualitative analysis, we find that pre-existing relationships, …

The Ethical Contribution Of Cultural Diversity As A Social Determinant Of Health, Pooja Patel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The dissertation examines how cultural diversity as a social determinant of health, aligned with human life, human dignity, human rights, and human equity provides an ethical contribution. My explanation of the ethical contribution of cultural diversity as a SDOH refers to a quadrant of topics that expands the approach of the UNESCO Declaration of Bioethics and Human Rights. The UNESCO approach addresses cultural diversity in relation to human dignity and human rights. I adopt a quadrant of topics that aligns human dignity with human life and human rights with equity. Aligning these topics in the quadrant (dignity/life and rights/equity) explains …

The Intersection Of Herbicide Policy, Exposure, And Health At The University Of Connecticut, Katherine Hayward

Honors Scholar Theses

Pesticides play an extremely complicated role in our everyday lives. From the water you use to make your coffee, to the breastmilk your neighbor provides for their child, to the lake your dog swims in, chemical pesticides or their byproducts have been found in nearly every corner of our lives. The chemicals used in synthetic herbicides, a subcategory of pesticides, have far reaching negative impacts on human health, biodiversity, and water quality. Despite there being numerous published studies on the relationships between pesticide exposures and health, there is still ongoing discord and controversy surrounding their role in our lives. After …

The Compound Risk Of Heat And Covid-19 In New York City: Riskscapes, Physical And Social Factors, And Interventions, Janelle Knox-Hayes, Juan Camilo Osorio, Natasha Stamler, Maria Dombrov, Rose Winer, Mary Hannah Smith, Reginald Blake, Cynthia Rosenzweig

Publications and Research

Climate change is disrupting the fundamental conditions of human life and exacerbating existing inequity by placing further burdens on communities that are already vulnerable. Risk exposure varies by where people live and work. In this article, we examine the spatial overlap of the compound risks of COVID-19 and extreme heat in New York City. We assess the relationship between socio-demographic and natural, built and social environmental characteristics, and the spatial correspondence of COVID-19 daily case rates across three pandemic waves. We use these data to create a compound risk index combining heat, COVID-19, density and social vulnerability. Our findings demonstrate …

Developing E-Covery, An App-Based Intervention To Support Individuals With Co-Occurring Problem Alcohol And Opioid Use, Adam Viera

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Background: Co-occurring alcohol and opioid use are an under-addressed factor associated with increased drug overdose mortality. There are many challenges in the treatment of co-occurring alcohol and opioid use with most individuals in need of substance use treatment not receiving treatment services. Those that do have a high likelihood of returning to use, with resumption of use following treatment episodes increasing risk for overdose. Contextual factors have been recognized as triggers of cravings to return to use. Few interventions work to address the effect these factors have on individuals in early recovery, with locations serving as a particularly challenging trigger. …