Center for Health Informatics Examining Environmental Impacts on Health Speaker Series: Marynia Kolak

Marynia Aniela Kolak is a health geographer and spatial epidemiologist integrating a socio-ecological view of health, spatial data science, and a human-centred design approach to investigate regional and neighbourhood health equity. Kolak is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Geography & GIScience and serves as PI on the Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) and Place project funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and MPI on the Localize Opioid Use Disorder (LOUD) study by NIDA/NIH. They are also an Associate Editor at Preventing Chronic Disease, Journal of Maps, and Cartography and Geographic Information Science, and Vice Chair of the Health & Medical Specialty Group at the American Association of Geographers.

Abstract:
Integrating social, economic, health, and environmental factors at small area scales for dynamic interaction and exploration is integral to assessing the various dimensions of community vulnerability to environmental injustice, as well as enabling decision-making by policymakers, health advocates, as well as communities most impacted. To better understand climate challenges and advocate for improved policy and resources, communities need more accessible data, the ability to integrate their own stories, and carefully incorporated frameworks that strive to ensure that injustice is not reproduced in the research process itself. The ChiVes platform, an open-source mapping application linking dozens of indicators at the neighbourhood level in Chicago, serves as a decentralized spatial data infrastructure focused on stakeholder relationships, integrating data and processes that consider the social and historical aspects of environmental injustice. ChiVes links air pollution and temperature measures from multiple projects alongside greenspace, built environment, housing, health, historical, and resource data, and also includes a resource guide and community report tool. It has been used to support tree plantings, make the case for cooling centres, and as a teaching tool in environmental justice. A new flexible, multi-criterion “index builder” enables residents to develop new metrics with available data on the fly. Using co-design participatory approaches and inspired by the environmental inequality formation framework, the ChiVes platform interface continues to be refined by city residents. Future research in spatial decision support frameworks supporting environmental justice may benefit from participatory design and Open Science approaches.

About the speaker series:
This speaker series brings together researchers on campus whose work touches on environmental impacts (e.g., air quality, water quality, weather patterns) on health, to share their current research and to foster discussion and collaboration.  

We meet most Tuesdays, noon-1 pm US Central Time, on Zoom.  This series is hosted by the iSchool’s Center for Health Informatics (CHI), in partnership with the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) and the University of Illinois’ Office of Strategic Initiatives (OSI).