RESPIRAR project launches open learning course through University of Maryland’s School of Public Health
Students can begin enrolling on April 1st, 2024
Dates: Tuesday, May 28 — Saturday, June 1
Location: Community Foundation of the Eastern Shore, 1324 Belmont Ave. Suite 401, Salisbury, MD 21804
Overview
This course takes place in Salisbury, MD, where students will gain hands-on experience understanding key environmental and health concerns affecting migrant farmworkers working throughout the Eastern Shore.
Throughout this week-long course, students will learn how to apply methods for systems approaches and conduct rapid community inquiries.
Classroom-based learning will be complemented with community visits, and students will be able to apply the tools learned in partnership with community organizations and other stakeholders.
This course culminates with an integrative assignment where student teams propose a Rapid Community Inquiry plan based on the methods learned throughout the course.
By the end of this course, students will be able to:
Apply systems thinking tools to visually represent a public health issue in a format other than the standard narrative
Integrate perspectives from other sectors and/or professions to promote and advance population health
Discuss how structural bias, social inequities, and racism undermine health and create challenges to achieving environmental justice and health equity at organizational, community, and societal levels
Assess population needs, assets, and capacities that affect communities’ health and environmental conditions
Main activities include:
Guest lectures
In-the-classroom learning
Field Visits
Evening public sessions
Developing an inquiry protocol
Meet the Instructors:
Dr. Devon Payne-Sturges is an Associate Professor with the Maryland Institute for Applied Environmental Health in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the School of Public Health, University of Maryland College Park. Her research focuses on racial and economic disparities in exposures to environmental contaminants and associated health risks.
Ellis Ballard is the director of the Social Systems Design Lab and an assistant professor of Practice at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis. Ballard is a system dynamics modeler and community-based researcher with extensive experience leading and training research teams in the design and use of participatory group model-building exercises.
(Tentative) Dr. Thurka Sangaramoorthy is a cultural and medical anthropologist and global health researcher conducting community-engaged ethnographic research. Her work is broadly concerned with power and subjectivity in global economies of care. Dr. Sangaramoorthy is an affiliate professor at Addis Ababa University and the author of four books, including one on immigration and health on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.
Who can register?
Undergraduate and graduate students in the region, practicum students focusing on the RESPIRAR project, and community-facing NGO professionals.
Contact: respirarproject@umd.edu
Collaborating Partners:
This course is made possible by the following partners through the RESPIRAR Project:
University of Maryland School of Public Health
Social System Design Lab at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis
CATA - The Farmworkers Support Committee
American University (tentative partner)
About the RESPIRAR Project
The RESPIRAR project aims to uncover insights to help inform policies and best practices protecting the health of vulnerable and essential farmworkers. We are unpacking how institutional policies, regulatory responses, and practices, historic and contemporary, shape respiratory health trends among migrant seasonal farmworkers.