FOCUS
Through community-based research, Kristi hopes to inform policy and practice initiatives that reduce place-based barriers to health and improve the health opportunities of women, infants, and children living in low-income urban neighborhoods. Her current research aims to understand how the physical, social, and service environments in low-income urban neighborhoods shape pregnant women’s health and infant birth outcomes, particularly for low-income women and women of color.
MORE ABOUT KRISTI
Kristi’s work with an urban public health department and her personal experiences with pregnancy motivate her interest in understanding how urban conditions shape maternal and infant health. She believes that the HPRS Program will help her learn and implement strategies for using her research to effectively bridge the experiences of pregnant women living in low-income urban neighborhoods with policymakers to inform equitable place-based policy solutions that support maternal and infant health.
DISSERTATION GRANT AWARDEE — AUGUST 2020
Exploring the Relationship between Historical Redlining and Place-Based Reproductive Health Inequities: A Qualitative GIS Approach
Racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic inequities in adverse birth outcomes persist in the United States, however, individual level-characteristics do not fully explain these inequities and evidence suggests that medical advancements and increased access to prenatal care have done little to reduce these inequities. As a result, increased attention has been given to neighborhood effects on health. Despite increased attention to neighborhood influences on reproductive health, there is limited research on the historical macrostructural determinants of neighborhood conditions and place-based reproductive health inequities. Guided by feminist neighborhood political ecology, this dissertation explores the legacy of a racist federal housing policy, specifically residential redlining, as it manifests in contemporary neighborhood conditions and spatial clusters of preterm birth in the City and County of Denver.
TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE HPRS DISSERTATION AWARDS, CLICK HERE.
