Karen J

I make change in health by marrying the best science with the best local knowledge. I am a scientist who works with neighborhood residents. As partners we learn about their neighborhood's health and how to increase it.
I have a fondness for the African American faith communities in inner-city Houston, Texas in the United States. Houston is the fourth largest city in the United States and quite wealthy. It is the home of the Texas Medical Center, the world's largeest. Yet in the inner city, there are many who cannot benefit from this entity's research and health care centers. The African American faith community is one of these communities. I feel a special fondness and connection fo the African American faith community in Sunnyside, a smaall African American community that although urban, still has horses running down the streets!
I want Sunnyside to become a healthier community. It is one of the most unhealthy neighborhods in our city. It was one of Houston's earliest African American communities but is now one with very high rates of every malady imaginable: crime, low performing schools, chronic disease, HIV/AIDS, population incarceration. This has a negative affect of the people that work there...in fact, many have lost hope completely. I want to work with the residents of this community to build a community-based, congregation focused, sustainable, intervention with changes that we can measure.
My main area of work is building neighborhood-based community health coalitions to improve local public health. I am trained as a social scientist but I believe that the most important knowledge for improving or solving a community health problems resides in the hearts and minds of those persons who must live with the problem every day of their lives. That is why I attempt to marry the best science with the best local knowledge avilable. My work includes early work in inner city Houston in neighborhood health assessment in partnership with community residents. My later work includes building an African American health coalition in Galveston County, Texas called the Galveston Island Community Research Advisory Committee or GICRAC. Define. Partners Grant. Current Work. Plan is to bring this experience to Sunnyside Neighborhood through the United Methodist-Episcopal Mental Health Initiative. Publiations.