April 1-7, 2024 is National Public Health Week, and the Loma Linda University School of Public Health is proud to highlight the critical issues and focus areas our alumni, students, faculty, and staff have been working on. Join us all week for special content, and conversations with public health experts.
Thursday
New Tools and Innovations are what advance the public health field and allow us to be more efficient and have a greater impact in the work we do. LLUSPH has the unique opportunity of having a dedicated Health Geographic Informational Systems (GIS) lab on campus that works closely with the local community and Esri, the developer of the leading GIS software ArcGIS. This allows each an every student that comes through our programs to receive a basic introduction to GIS and even pursue a specialization certificate if interested. The lab works with several researchers and community partners to map various health data in order to guide decision making when prioritizing intervention efforts. Check out this map that our students have been working on to visualize the burden of housing cost in San Bernardino. Although this is an important social issue, unless we understand the significance of social determinants on health, we miss the connection it has to health outcomes. StoryMaps like this allow public health professionals and researchers to give context to health and social issues.
Tuesday
For Healthy Neighborhood Day we visited the JardÃn de la Salud (Garden of Health) which is a Community Garden in San Bernardino and a program of the LLU Community-Academic Partners in Service (CAPS). We talked to our recent alum Taylor Pope, MPH (Global Health 2022), who is the current director of the CAPS office. Taylor highlighted how crucial spaces like community gardens are for promoting health through increased food security, improved social cohesion, and providing safe havens. We also gained insights from garden members who emphasized the significance of such spaces in cities like San Bernardino.
