On April 8th, the UHC hosted Dr. Mariana Arcaya, Germeshausen Professor of Urban Planning and Public Health at MIT.
Mariana Arcaya is a social epidemiologist and urban planner whose work explores dynamic relationships between geographic contexts, particularly neighborhoods, and health. Much of her current work focuses on Participatory Action Research (PAR). This research methodology seeks to engage with community members and researchers equitably throughout the research process, aiming for both sides of the process to understand and solve real-world problems.
Her talk, “10 Years of Participatory Action Research to Promote Healthier Neighborhoods,” began by sharing the key principles to effectively execute PAR within the context of researching ways to address public health issues:
- The best way to understand a complex problem is by trying to solve it.
- The people closest to the problem are uniquely well-positioned to solve the problem
The first observation Dr. Arcaya presented through her work in PAR presented the success in moving the research question away from “is my hypothesis correct?” to “what should we do?”
The example she used to illustrate this was the Healthy Neighborhood Equity Fund, a fund developed by stakeholders in Massachusetts that provides funding for housing that is intentionally aiming to improve health, and its associated Healthy Neighborhoods Study to gauge its effectiveness.
Watch the full presentation, learn what it takes to implement PAR methods within a study like the Healthy Neighborhoods Study, and see other observations from Dr. Arcaya below.