Proximity of Urban Farms to Contaminated Sites in Baltimore, Maryland

Abstract

Isabel Shargo, Jonathan Hall, Ashley Deng, Niya Khanjar, Camryn Edwards, Isabelle Berman, Joseph Galarraga and Sacoby Wilson Isabel Shargo is an environmental health professional with experience working in a wide range of public health topics, including health communication, community health assessments, environmental justice, and population health. She is passionate about using and mobilizing data to improve public health. She has conducted analyses using GIS, Tableau, and SAS to characterize and investigate environmental and health issues of concern. She has also worked in the public and private sectors to implement and maintain sustainable performance improvement strategies. She holds her bachelor’s of science in environmental science and master’s of public health, specializing in environmental health. Jonathan Hall is a master’s of public policy graduate from the University of Maryland-College Park specializing in environmental policy. He uses GIS to inform public policy with spatial solutions. He is interested in resource sustainability, pollution, and environmental health. He has done work for the Global Environmental Fund attempting to map tree loss and mercury pollution in relation to gold mining. Ashley Deng is a second year public health science student and Banneker Key scholar at the University of Maryland-College Park. She currently conducts research in the Community Engagement, Environmental Justice, and Health (CEEJH) laboratory under Dr. Wilson. Her research interests lie in environmental justice, kinesiology, women’s health, and infectious disease. Niya Khanjar is a second-year engineering student at the University of Maryland-College Park. She is majoring in bioengineering, with a minor in sustainability studies. She has worked in the CEEJH laboratory under Dr. Wilson as an undergraduate research assistant since June 2020. Camryn Edwards is a senior at the University of Maryland-College Park majoring in public health science with a minor in Black women’s studies. Her previous research experience centers around the effect of residential reentry programs on the mental health of formerly incarcerated women. Isabelle Berman is a member of the CEEJH laboratory. Isabelle has worked for Montgomery County, Maryland’s Department of Environmental Protection, studying local stream ecology data and community engagement in climate change. Joseph Galarraga holds a master’s of public health degree with a concentration in health equity from the University of Maryland School of Public Health, Health Policy and Management department. He is a faculty assistant with the CEEJH laboratory. His research interests include housing and health, community development, environmental health, and health disparities. Sacoby Wilson is Associate Professor and Director of the CEEJH laboratory at the Maryland Institute for Applied Environmental Health, School of Public Health, University of Maryland-College Park. He has 20 years of experience performing community-engaged research including community-based participatory research, crowd science, and citizen science on environmental justice and health topics in the mid-Atlantic region, Carolinas, Deep South, and the Gulf Coast. He is on the board of the Citizen Science Association, former board member for Community Campus Partnerships for Health, and a member of the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council.