A research lab at ICTA-UAB
– Helen Cole
Helen Cole
Helen Cole is a social epidemiologist with training in urban health, health equity and community health. Drawing from the fields of sociology, critical geography, and urban planning, she challenge traditional public health perspectives by questioning and evaluating the long-term social justice impacts of structural urban interventions (e.g., the potential for green/environmental gentrification resulting from urban greening). Her current work explores whether, and how, healthier cities may also be made equitable, placing urban health interventions in the context of the broader urban social and political environments.
Prior to joining BCNUEJ, her work primarily focused on evaluating behavioral interventions for chronic disease prevention and management. She worked on several randomized control trials testing interventions such as motivational interviewing and patient navigation conducted by community health workers in black churches and barbershops in New York City. Another past pilot study included training community health nurses to conduct cervical cancer screening using a low-cost method and mobile phone imaging to provide expert feedback in Accra, Ghana. In addition, she organized and served as advisor for trainees in a cardiovascular research training program for doctors and researchers in Ghana an Nigeria. Conceptually, she evaluated the impact of disaggregating data on race by nativity or ethnicity on understanding the sociodemographic and behavioral predictors of health inequity in diverse urban settings.
Her current work attempts to inform our understanding of the broader political and social context within which health inequities are produced and maintained. Her current projects include:
1) Conceptualizing gentrification as a moderator in the relationship between urban amenities (such as parks and green spaces) and health, expanding the scope of the GREENLULUs project (with colleague Margarita Triguero-Mas)
2) Working with colleagues at the Barcelona Agency for Public Health and the University of Michigan to explore the relationship between gentrification and health (with Margarita Triguero-Mas)
3) Evaluating the effect of U.S. healthcare system restructuring (such as hospital mergers, acquisitions, and closings, and the opening or expansion of new types of facilities sited and targeted for profit motives- a concept we have coined “healthcare gentrification”) on access to quality healthcare and access to quality jobs, with colleague Emily Franzosa from CUNY