South Side Of Chicago Research Articles

The impact of participation in a mindfulness-based intervention on posttraumatic stress symptomatology among Black women: A pilot study.

Objective: Women, racial/ethnic minorities, and socioeconomically disadvantaged groups experience trauma and PTSD at a rate of up to four times the U.S. national average. The aim of the present study is to assess the association between participation in a mindfulness-based intervention delivered in a community health center and posttraumatic stress symptoms among socioeconomically disadvantaged, Black women with trauma histories. We hypothesized that participants would experience a significant reduction in trauma symptom severity from pre- to post-intervention. Method: Women were recruited from a community health center on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois. Participants completed self-report measures of trauma symptoms, mindfulness, depression, and stress. Pre/postintervention differences in symptom severity were analyzed with paired sample t tests and independent sample t tests. Results: A total of 36 women with trauma symptom data were assessed. There was a significant reduction of trauma symptom severity from baseline to end of treatment. A minority of participants endorsed slightly higher symptomatology at the end of treatment. Women whose trauma symptom severity increased were less symptomatic overall to begin treatment; they had significantly lower trauma and depressive symptom severity at baseline. Conclusions: Socioeconomically disadvantaged, Black women with moderate to severe trauma symptoms benefited from a mindfulness-based intervention delivered in a community health care setting. While some women with mild trauma symptoms may have become more aware of their symptoms through an intervention designed to increase awareness of thoughts and feelings, most women experienced a decrease in trauma symptom severity. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Partnering With African American Faith-Based Communities to Support Dementia Caregivers

African Americans (AA) are twice as likely to develop Alzheimer’s Disease as Caucasians. Historically, houses of faith have been a center of the AA community and a trusted source of information and support. Based on these facts, as well as community needs, the SHARE Network (a Geriatrics Workforce Enhancement Program on the South Side of Chicago) in partnership with faith-based community leaders, created an opportunity for community members to train to become resource experts on Alzheimer’s Disease & Related Dementias (ADRD) and create sustainable caregiver support groups (CSGs). The resulting initiative, Dementia Resource Champions, is a train-the-trainer style health education initiative piloted in 2018, and subsequently expanded and modified due to COVID. Participants receive instruction on stress reduction, ADRD, and community resources. They discuss how to structure CSGs to meet community needs. Results of this initiative include development of five brand-new CSGs with faith communities on Chicago’s South Side.

African-American Race Predicts 1-Year Cognitive Decline Among Adults Without Moderate Dementia

Previous literature shows conflicting conclusions about the association between race and cognitive decline, particularly in early impairment. In this study, we aimed to test whether race predicted 1-year change in Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) score among older adults without moderate-severe dementia. We secondarily explored whether multimorbidity, polypharmacy, depressed mood, antidepressant use, body composition, or frailty changed the association. We analyzed data (n=122) from predominantly African American (AfA, 78.7%) community-dwelling older adults from the south side of Chicago. Participants underwent baseline and 1-year MoCA testing. Age, gender, race, education, monthly income, co-morbidities (Charlson Comorbidity Index), medication use (<5 vs ≥5), depression (PHQ-2), proportion lean mass (DEXA), and the frailty phenotype (range 0-5) were collected at baseline. In a multivariate linear model, we regressed 1-year MoCA score on baseline MoCA score, race, and demographics and then evaluated the impact of each covariate added separately to the model on the race-cognition relationship. The mean MoCA score at baseline was 25.2+/-0.2 (range 18-30) and 41.0% of participants experienced ≥1 point MoCA decline at 1 year. After adjusting for demographics, AfAs experienced a greater 1-year MoCA decline (β= -1.3, p=0.04) compared to other races. The effect size was unchanged after adjusting for multimorbidity and polypharmacy (β= -1.3, p=0.04), attenuated slightly after adjusting for frailty (β= -1.2, p=0.06), depressed mood (β= -1.2, p=0.05), lean mass (β= -1.2, p=0.04), and attenuated notably after adjusting for antidepressant use (β= -1.0, p=0.11). Findings support the need to further explore racial differences in cognitive decline and potentially related anti-depressant underuse.

Because the movement, it’s never done

Abstract The South Side Community Art Center (SSCAC) is a cultural hub, meeting place, and gallery on the South Side of Chicago. The only surviving Works Progress Administration (WPA) community art center, it functions as a space for African American art, intergenerational dialogue, and as an institution for community education in the arts. In this interview with Natalie Battles, artist, activist, and former employee at the SSCAC, we learn about the center’s history and its connections with social and cultural movements, her work there, and what it is like to be a young artist involved with a long-standing institution of African American art.

Comparison of clinical and echocardiographic features of first and second waves of COVID-19 at a large, tertiary medical center serving a predominantly African American patient population

As clinicians have gained experience in treating patients with the novel SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) virus, mortality rates for patients with acute COVID-19 infection have decreased. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has identified the African American population as having increased risk of COVID-19 associated mortality, however little is known about echocardiographic markers associated with increased mortality in this patient population. We aimed to compare the clinical and echocardiographic features of a predominantly African American patient cohort hospitalized with acute COVID-19 infection during the first (March–June 2020) and second (September–December 2020) waves of the COVID-19 pandemic, and to investigate which parameters are most strongly associated with composite all-cause mortality. We performed consecutive transthoracic echocardiograms (TTEs) on 105 patients admitted with acute COVID-19 infection during the first wave and 129 patients admitted during the second wave. TTE parameters including left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF), left ventricular global longitudinal strain (LVGLS), right ventricular global longitudinal strain (RVGLS), right ventricular free-wall strain (RVFWS), and right ventricular basal diameter (RVBD) were compared between the two groups. Clinical and demographic characteristics including underlying co-morbidities, biomarkers, in-hospital treatment regimens, and outcomes were collected and analyzed. Univariable and multivariable analyses were performed to determine variables associated with all-cause mortality. There were no significant differences between the two waves in terms of age, gender, BMI, or race. Overall all-cause mortality was 35.2% for the first wave compared to 14.7% for the second wave (p < 0.001). Previous medical conditions were similar between the two waves with the exception of underlying lung disease (41.9% vs. 29.5%, p = 0.047). Echocardiographic parameters were significantly more abnormal in the first wave compared to the second: LVGLS (− 17.1 ± 5.0 vs. − 18.9 ± 4.8, p = 0.02), RVGLS (− 15.7 ± 5.9% vs. − 19.0 ± 5.9%, p < 0.001), RVFWS (− 19.5 ± 6.8% vs. − 23.2 ± 6.9%, p = 0.001), and RVBD (4.5 ± 0.8 vs. 3.9 ± 0.7 cm, p < 0.001). Stepwise multivariable logistic analysis showed mechanical ventilation, RVFWS, and RVGLS to be independently associated with mortality. In a predominantly African American patient population on the south side of Chicago, the clinical and echocardiographic features of patients hospitalized with acute COVID-19 infection demonstrated marked improvement from the first to the second wave of the pandemic, with a significant decrease in all-cause mortality. Possible explanations include implementation of evidence-based therapies, changes in echocardiographic practices, and behavioral changes in our patient population. Mechanical ventilation and right-sided strain-based markers were independently associated with mortality.

From Exposure to Violence between Mother and Her Intimate Partner to Suicidality Experienced by Urban Adolescents in Chicago's Southside.

Although the relationship between exposure to intimate partner violence and youths’ psychological and other wellbeing has been widely studied, there is limited research about how youths’ exposure to violence between mother and her intimate partner may be related to youth psychological wellbeing. The study used a sample of urban adolescents in Chicago Southbound to examine whether youths’ exposure to verbal conflict between mother and her intimate partner is related to their suicidality and whether youth depression and aggression may be in between such a linkage. Our findings indicated that one-third of the youth had suicidal thoughts or suicidal/self-hurting attempts. Youths’ exposure to verbal conflict between mother and her intimate partner was associated with their depressive and aggressive symptoms, and depressive symptoms subsequently were linked to suicidality. The findings also showed that youth depressive symptoms and aggressive symptoms were positively correlated, which may influence their associations with suicidality. We concluded that youth exposure to parental intimate partner violence, even comparatively mild forms such as a verbal conflict between mother and her intimate partner, may increase their risk of suicidality by worsening psychological wellbeing. The findings highlight the importance of tackling youth suicidality risks while accounting for their exposure to intimate partner violence including verbal conflicts between parents.

A retrospective analysis of high sensitivity cardiac troponin-T ranges in non-myocardial infarction emergency department visits

IntroductionCurrent evidence suggests that high sensitivity cardiac troponin-T (hs-cTnT) values differ based on sex, race, age, and kidney function. However, most studies examining the relationship of hs-cTnT and these individual factors are in healthy participants, leading to difficulty in interpreting hs-cTnT values in the Emergency Department (ED) setting. We seek to examine the relationship between hs-cTnT values and sex, race, age, and kidney function in a contemporary, urban academic setting.MethodsED visits from June 2018 through April 2019 with at least 1 hs-cTnT and no diagnosis of acute myocardial infarction (AMI) at an academic medical center in the south side of Chicago were retrospectively analyzed. Median hs-cTnT values were stratified by sex (male or female), race (African American or Caucasian), age, estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR), and stage of chronic kidney disease.Results 9679 encounters, representing 7989 distinct patients, were included for analysis (age 58 ± 18 years, 59% female, 85% black). Males had significantly higher median hs-cTnT values than females (16 [8–34] vs. 9 [6–22] ng/L, p < 0.001), African Americans had a significantly lower median value than Caucasians (10 [6–24] vs. 15 [6–29] ng/L, p < 0.001), and those with atrial fibrillation (27 [16–48] vs. 9 [6–19] ng/L, p < 0.001) and heart failure (28 [14–48] vs. 8 [6–15] ng/L, p < 0.001) had higher median values than those without. Median hs-cTnT values increased significantly with increased age and decreased eGFR. All relationships continued to be significant even after multivariable regression of sex, age, race, eGFR, presence of atrial fibrillation, and presence of heart failure (p < 0.01).ConclusionsAnalysis of hs-cTnT in non-AMI patients during ED encounters showed that males have higher values than females, African Americans have lower values than Caucasians, those with atrial fibrillation and heart failure have higher values than those without, and that older age and lower eGFR were associated with higher median values.

Ecological correlates of bullying and peer victimization among urban African American adolescents

Adolescent bullying is a concern for adolescents, parents, teachers, school officials, and the general public. The purpose of the study is to apply Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems perspective and explore factors that are correlated with bullying perpetration and victimization among 638 urban African American adolescents in Chicago's Southside. Bullying victimization and perpetration are found to be influenced by microsystem-level factors, such as exposure to delinquent peers, teacher support, and neighborhood disorganization. An intervention strategy that involves teachers is particularly important. Anti-bullying intervention and prevention programs in urban schools need to account for the unique situations of urban African American adolescents.

Deferral and the Dream

Deferral and the Dream

Rethinking “Disinvestment”: Historical geographies of predatory property relations on Chicago’s South Side

As vacancy in Rust Belt cities becomes a focal point of planning and policy efforts, Chicago planners and private institutions attribute it to “disinvestment” and seek to remove barriers to real estate investment in order to unlock the market’s purported ability to bring land to “productive use.” Drawing on findings from an analysis of nearly 10,000 postwar property records in the South Side Chicago neighborhood of Englewood, this article demonstrates that vacancy stems not from disinvestment but from predatory and hyperextractive investments in housing that derive economic feasibility and legal sanction from property’s historical articulation with race. I argue that racial regimes of ownership are endemic to the operation of real estate markets and function as central modalities for the appropriation of ground rent. As an analytical lens into the political economy of land, racial regimes of ownership expand urban geographers’ capacity to address the mechanisms that mobilize difference to accommodate capital’s circulation and, more broadly, to account for the racial logics that configure the terrain of contemporary land struggles.

Transit development and housing displacement: The case of the Chicago Red Line Extension

Chicago's South Side has long been characterized as a “transit desert” – an area with high transit inaccessibility and insufficient infrastructure to meet residents' needs (Jiao & Dillivan, 2013). Without adequate transit, residents cannot reach employment opportunities or regional amenities – contributing to economic, spatial, and social marginalization. The Chicago Transit Authority's proposed Red Line Extension (RLE) is designed to connect the city's far south side neighborhoods to Chicago's core. Given the scope of the RLE, 175 parcels have been chosen for demolition, meaning that a similar number of households face displacement to make room for the RLE right of way – which may have potentially negative consequences in realizing the subsequent benefits of improved transit access. In this article, we perform an ex-ante analysis of RLE induced displacement. Specifically, we: 1) predict potential location choices that transit displacees are most likely to choose; and 2) analyze these locations in relation to access to transit, amenities, employment, and housing affordability, among others. Within the context of transportation planning, ex-ante analysis is important because it can minimize unintended and negative consequences of transit-induced displacement – like decreased transit access and a loss of potential neighborhood improvements - by predicting potential relocation choices for displacees. Such predicted choices can help planners and decision-makers better understand the trade-offs for directly affected households and thereby allow planners and decision-makers to assist in relocation assistance that maximizes the benefits of the necessarily displaced.

Pathways from bullying victimization to suicidal thoughts among urban African American adolescents: Implications for nurse practitioners.

Children and adolescents who are victimized by their peers are at an elevated risk of suicidal thoughts and behaviors. Bullying and suicide are major public health concerns; however, studies have not fully addressed the link between peer victimization and suicidal behavior among urban African American youth. The current study proposed and explored the pathways from peer victimization to suicidal thoughts via internalizing behaviors (i.e., low self-esteem, depression, and hopelessness). The sample consisted of 638 African American adolescents (aged 12-22) from low-income communities in Chicago's Southside. A path model using the structural equation model was employed, controlling for biological sex, age, and government assistance. The study found that victims of bullying are likely to develop low self-esteem and depression, and depression can contribute to feelings of hopelessness, thereby increasing suicidal risks. Understanding the pathways from bullying victimization to suicidal thoughts is beneficial for nurse practitioners who assess and provide services and treatment to adolescents. Because of limited resources in urban schools, anti-bullying programs need to be cost-effective.

Bullying victimization, psychosocial functioning, and protective factors: Comparing African American heterosexual and sexual minority adolescents in Chicago's Southside.

African American heterosexual and sexual minority (SM) adolescents report widespread bullying victimization (BV), which is associated with poorer psychosocial functioning. However, studies examining potential protective factors that moderate this association are limited. Using data from a cross-sectional study conducted in Chicago, we examined the association between BV and psychosocial functioning among a sample of heterosexual (n = 475) and SM (n = 105) African American adolescents and examined whether four empirically-supported protective factors moderated these associations. Among SM adolescents, having close parents was protective against psychosomatic symptoms for those who reported high BV and having caring teachers was protective against substance use for those who reported both high and low BV. Among heterosexual adolescents, having close parents was protective against substance use for those who reported high BV but having high neighborhood support exacerbated the risk of developing psychosomatic symptoms for those who reported high BV. Implications for school and parental-based interventions are discussed.

Transcriptomic analyses of black women in neighborhoods with high levels of violence

Chronic stress threatens an individual's capacity to maintain psychological and physiological homeostasis, but the molecular processes underlying the biological embedding of these experiences are not well understood. This is particularly true for marginalized groups, presenting a fundamental challenge to decreasing racial, economic, and gender-based health disparities. Physical and social environments influence genome function, including the transcriptional activity of core stress responsive genes. We studied the relationship between social experiences that are associated with systemic inequality (e.g., racial segregation, poverty, and neighborhood violence) and blood cell (leukocytes) gene expression, focusing on the activation of transcription factors (TF) critical to stress response pathways. The study used data from 68 women collected from a convenience sample in 2013 from the Southside of Chicago. Comparing single, low-income Black mothers living in neighborhoods with high levels of violence (self-reported and assessed using administrative police records) to those with low levels of violence we found no significant differences in expression of 51 genes associated with the Conserved Transcriptional Response to Adversity (CTRA). Using TELiS analysis of promoter TF-binding motif prevalence we found that mothers who self-reported higher levels of neighborhood stress showed greater expression of genes regulated by the glucocorticoid receptor (GR). These findings may reflect increased cortisol output from the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, or increased GR transcriptional sensitivity. Transcript origin analyses identified monocytes and dendritic cells as the primary cellular sources of gene transcripts up-regulated in association with neighborhood stress. The prominence of GR-related transcripts and the absence of sympathetic nervous system-related CTRA transcripts suggest that a subjective perception of elevated chronic neighborhood stress may be associated with an HPA-related defeat-withdrawal phenotype rather than a fight-or-flight phenotype. The defeat-withdrawal phenotype has been previously observed in animal models of severe, overwhelming threat. These results demonstrate the importance of studying biological embedding in diverse environments and communities, specifically marginalized populations such as low-income Black women.

What Types of Delinquent Activities are Bullies, Victims, and Bully/Victims in Urban Neighborhoods Most Likely Involved in?

PurposeThe current study explores which types of delinquent activities bullies, victims, and bully/victims are most at risk of from a sample of urban African American adolescents. Design and methodsThe research design was cross-sectional, which includes a sample of low-income African American adolescents in Chicago's Southside. The study participants included 523 adolescents. Descriptive statistics, latent class analysis, and logistic regression analysis were conducted. ResultsBullies, victims, and bully/victims are all at a heightened risk of theft, threatening behavior, and assaultive behavior. Irrespective of bullying status, delinquency is a serious problem for urban adolescents who are bullies, victims, or bully/victims. ConclusionsInvestigating the types of delinquent activities bullies, victims, and bully/victims are most likely to be involved in is important. Implications for practiceEvidence-based treatment plans require assessment tools that are tailored for urban African American adolescents. Nurses are advised to consider interventions that promote resilience.

Pullman: Labor, Race, and the Urban Landscape in a Company Town: A Digital Exhibition at The Newberry

Reviewed by: Pullman: Labor, Race, and the Urban Landscape in a Company Town: A Digital Exhibition at The Newberry Jaka Lombar It may well be that in the age of lockdowns and quarantines, the strengths and shortcomings of digital archival infrastructures and online exhibitions will come to make or break them as the apt alternatives to the physical venues that were until recently, the default assemblages for the dissemination of historical knowledge. The origin of The Newberry's exhibition on Pullman (https://publications.newberry.org/pullman/), a neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, is a series of workshops on industrial capitalism (2011), which necessitated the digitization of a number of archival documents that now form the core of the online exhibition. The documents provide a framework for a central narrative of Pullman's origins and development through the urban, race, and labor histories of the town, all of which are contextualised through the wider national narratives and movements that permeated the local dynamics of a manufacturing town. The exhibit illustrates how the expansive social vision of magnate George Pullman was put to practice in the town where his company not only owned the factories but the homes workers occupied, the bar they drank in, and even the ground on which their church stood. The all-encompassing planning and Pullman's capacity for asserting power over the local population eventually exacerbated hostilities between the Pullman company and its workers, contributing to the 1894 strike. Crucially, the historical narrative that The Newberry presents does not shy away from the White supremacy that underlay Pullman's supposedly altruistic practice of hiring Black workers exclusively for the service positions. The exposition text candidly recognizes that this reflected a mindset that was "deeply paternalistic and informed by racial presuppositions" within which the Black workers were merely permitted and expected "to serve white people.#x201D; The exhibition centers on the social strata from the macro perspective in the section entitled "In the City," to the more and more local iterations of [End Page 119] the urban spatiality in sections such as "In the Town," "In the Shops," and "In the Neighborhood." Occasionally, the exhibition texts are also hyperlinked with other similar online projects such as the online Encyclopedia of Chicago. By utilizing the virtual qualities of the exhibition format while also retaining the majority of the content on site, the narrative flow of the exhibit is both future-proofed from dead links and kept free of unnecessary clutter. Each of the sections is constructed from a handful of subsections, which in turn consist of a paragraph-long contextual introduction. Viewers can click on thumbnail images of scanned material to examine the magnified images in more detail. These artefacts are the cornerstones of the virtual exhibition, and it is through their framing that the presentation is at its strongest. Photographs, drawings, financial documents, employee service cards, music sheets, and other ephemera are most vibrant when the curators accentuate their distinctive qualities. By calling attention to oily handprints on a petition, for example, curators help viewers make a human connection to the hands of workers who had held the document. Curators also situate scanned materials within wider social dynamics by posing questions directly to the viewer: "How are working people characterized?" "What is emphasized?" "What gets overlooked?" These are some of the prompts offered in connection to illustrations of industrial relations published in the popular press. Such interventions help viewers to engage with the exhibition on their own terms, while making sure the emphasis remains on the artefacts that invite a response. The questions serve as useful devices to look beyond particular instances to the larger social and political issues of Pullman, and they are able to direct viewers' attention to artifacts and issues that may not be represented or physically present in the archive's collection. Unfortunately, the presentation of some documents in the exhibition does not meet the expectations set up by mass digitization. While single-page documents function well through enlargement that makes them legible, some of the multi-page reports, accounts, and testimonies that are marked as PDFs are, upon opening, merely the images of the first page and not the entire document. Aside...

Parish Boundaries at 25: A Personal History

Parish Boundaries at 25:A Personal History 61 John T. McGreevy As a senior in college without a plan, I pondered attending law school, even taking the LSAT. I simultaneously considered graduate school, despite knowing very little about what graduate school entailed. Most of the graduate schools to which I applied rejected my application—I had only the haziest "research agenda"—but I snuck by the Stanford admissions committee. So to Palo Alto I went. I loved the coursework and even the oral examinations, and enjoyed working with superb faculty such as David Kennedy and George Fredrickson, ultimately the first and second readers on my dissertation. But I agonized over choosing a dissertation topic. Despite completing seminar papers on agrarian populism in 1890s California and on draft resisters during the Vietnam war, I doubted whether I could sustain interest in either topic for the long haul.62 I "stopped out" (to use Stanford vocabulary) for a year and taught at Hales Franciscan high school, an overwhelmingly African-American Catholic High School on Chicago's south side. A graduate school friend, Daryl Scott, now a distinguished historian at Howard University and then working on his history of twentieth century ideas about race and social psychology, turned out to have attended the school. We marveled at this coincidence when we would bump into each other while working in the nearby University of Chicago library. 63 By then I had settled on writing about Catholicism. I did so not because I had read about Catholics in graduate school—I hadn't—but because I knew the depth of the milieu. Both of my parents had attended Catholic grade schools, high schools and colleges. (My father also attended a Catholic medical school.) Both had worked in Catholic hospitals for much of their professional lives. The sheer size of the [End Page 29] subculture made its absence from the standard literature on the United States glaring. Historians of, say, imperial Germany, where Catholics were an equally large part of the population, had done much more to make Catholicism a core topic of inquiry.64 But what would be my angle? No subject seemed more exciting to graduate students doing United States history at Stanford in the 1980s than "race" and George Fredrickson's work, and more distantly that of David Roediger, Barbara Fields and others animated late night conversations.65 J. Anthony Lukas's Common Ground, on Boston during the busing crisis, amazed me with its narrative force and recounting of the city's Catholic history. I wrote Lukas out of the blue and he encouraged me to examine his notes deposited at the Wisconsin Historical Society. I remember my excitement when I first plucked Arnold Hirsch's Making the Second Ghetto off a shelf in a Berkeley bookstore.66 Hirsch mentioned Catholics only episodically. But his brilliant research prompted me to ask: what did it mean that Black migrants to the northern cities encountered so many Euro-American Catholics? I tracked Hirsch's footnotes, which led to a full summer going through the Catholic Interracial Council papers at the Chicago Historical Society. So I had a topic. What I didn't anticipate was that interest in religion in modern United States history would explode in the twenty years after turning in my dissertation.67 As it turned out, and as often happens, I was not alone even in my specific interests. Gerald Gamm's Urban Exodus, on Jews and Catholics in Boston, published three years after Parish [End Page 30] Boundaries, even more convincingly displayed the importance of Catholic institutions in shaping American urban life.68 Thomas Sugrue's Origins of the Urban Crisis, published the same year as Parish Boundaries, became the lodestar for our generation's collective understanding of postwar urban history.69 To my mind it still is. Sugrue only touched on Catholicism—as he acknowledges—but almost against his will it popped up in his analysis at various points. He was the first person, I think, to cite my just about to be published dissertation. Sugrue's scholarly example makes me even more grateful for his commentary in this forum. I especially appreciated his discovery of a real estate listing...

Community-Driven Health Solutions on Chicago's South Side.

To reduce mortality for people experiencing cardiovascular health disparities, new innovations in health care must be implemented with strategic partnerships that involve trusted organizations and community members.

Age-Friendly Community Education: Fostering Health Behavior Change in a Medically Underserved Community

The University of Chicago GWEP, SHARE Network (Supporting Healthy Aging Resources and Education), is located on the South Side of Chicago, an urban medically underserved community. SHARE Network partners with a variety of community based organizations (CBOs) to support Age Friendly care through an Age Friendly Community Education Curriculum. In a one year period, 28 events were held in 13 CBO sites. Each of these events addressed the 4Ms of Age Friendly care with a specific content focus on Mentation (5 events), Mobility (5), Medications (4), and What Matters (10), and 4 events focused on multiple domains. There were 458 attendees, 290 completed surveys (63% response rate). Eighty-eight percent of participants planned to make a healthy behavior change after participation. Age Friendly Community Education can complement health system transformation to lead to health behavior change for community-dwelling older adults in medically underserved communities.

For “Peace, Quiet, and Respect”: Race, Policing, and Land Grabbing on Chicago’s South Side

AbstractThe first wave of environmental justice literature tended to define environmental racism as the disparate siting of toxic waste facilities in low‐income areas and communities of colour. More recently, environmental justice scholars have turned to a critical environmental justice framework to explore questions of spatial equity in relation to movements like Black Lives Matter. It is increasingly clear that the state, the built environment, economic development, and race converge in communities who face increased surveillance, divestment, and gentrification. Using Hyde Park on the South Side of Chicago as a case study, I draw on qualitative and historical methods to interrogate dominant narratives surrounding policing in urban environments. This paper highlights how Black geographies, as an analytic, highlight the intersection of police brutality and the built environment in Hyde Park. Legacies of urban renewal, now framed as neighbourhood revitalisation, and narratives around criminality and race all influence community police relations in the area. As the University of Chicago expands, so does its police force, and so do conflicts over who can use public spaces and how these spaces are used. I argue that institutions like the University of Chicago rely on the police to racially manage and expand their built environment. I also look to Black Lives Matter as a way to understand police brutality as enmeshed with toxic ecologies. This pairing of activism, ecology and policing allows a more nuanced analysis of the racialised underpinnings of the built environment.