Tufts Research Group Equity Symposium agenda

The Equity in America National Survey: Examining our Definition of Equity will be a webinar presented by the Tufts Research on Equity in Health, Wealth, and Civic Engagement Research Group, on Friday, November 19, 2021, 10:00 am to noon. Register here. Please join us for:

Presentations of current research, moderated by Shikhar Shrestha, PhD:

• Jennifer Allen, ScD, MPH, Parents’ Willingness to Vaccinate Children for COVID-19: Conspiracy Theories, Information Sources, and Perceived Responsibility.
• Eden Shaveet, BA, Marissa Gallegos, BS, Catie Urquhart, Web-Based Health Information Seeking Methods and Time Since Provider Engagement: Reflections on Access Equity.
• Wenhui Feng, PhD, Ideology and health behavior.
• Megan Mueller, PhD, Equity and the “pet effect”: Complexities in understanding how pets support health outcomes.

Panel discussion: Examining our Definition of Equity

Peter Levine, PhD, Associate Dean of Academic Affairs, Tufts Johnathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life (moderator)
Lionel McPherson, PhD Tufts Department of Philosophy
Felipe Dias, PhD, Tufts Department of Sociology
Elizabeth Setren, PhD, Tufts Department of Economics

Symposium registration link.

Students use Tufts' Equity in America survey data

The Equity Research Group's upcoming November 19 symposium (register here) will include Eden Shaveet, Marissa Gallegos, and Catie Urquhart presenting pre-publication findings from their paper "Web-Based Health Information Seeking Methods and Time Since Provider Engagement: Reflections on Access Equity." Shaveet et al.’s paper was born in Laura Corlin’s Leveraging Environmental Epidemiology for Equity Lab as Dr. Corlin introduced the student team to the Equity In America survey dataset.

Interviewed for this profile, Gallegos, along with Shaveet an MS candidate in Health Informatics and Analytics in the Department of Public Health and Community Medicine at the School of Medicine, noted she “appreciated learning how public health research is vital at the intersection of information science, health science, and social science in an increasingly technologically mediated society.” Urquhart, a BA candidate in Community Health and Environmental Studies in the School of Arts and Sciences, commented that her research has taught her “how routine engagement with primary care providers is crucial for screening and prevention and how equity and access play a role in this.”  Urquhart in particular is impressed with “how the Tufts community has encouraged student research initiatives and how willing different parts of the community are to collaborate.” Shaveet, Gallegos, and Urquhart hope you will join them at the webinar on November 19.

Student research briefs on Equity in America website  

Two research briefs by Tufts students have been newly added to the Tufts Equity Research Group website:
 
What predicts economic optimism? by Jackson Lubke (’23, Quantitative Economics, Mathematics) presents Lubke’s findings using data from Tufts’ Equity in America National Survey, including that “people expected to be worse off in a year if they had low income.”
 
COVID-19 and language by Sam Brill (’23, Anthropology and Pre-Med) found that “about 39% of the [Tufts’ Equity in America] survey respondents who primarily spoke Spanish (and 38% of those who chose to take the survey in Spanish) had contracted COVID-19, compared to 20% of those who primarily spoke English.”

Equity-related funding opportunities

Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice
The W.E.B. Du Bois Program of Research on Reducing Racial and Ethnic Disparities is providing funding for W.E.B. Du Bois "Scholars" and "Fellows" with the purpose of supporting "research that uncovers ways to reduce empirical racial and ethnic inequalities at the criminal and juvenile levels of the justice system." Partial application deadline is December 30, 2021. More details and application links are on the Office of the Vice Provost for Research's Funding Opportunities pages.

Environmental Protection Agency 
The STAR Solicitation for Cumulative Health Impacts at the Intersection of Climate Change, Environmental Justice, and Vulnerable Populations/Lifestages: Community-Based Research for Solutions seeks to fund "transdisciplinary community-based research intended to inform solutions to address environmental health-related disparities." Applications are due November 16, 2021. More details and application links are on the Office of the Vice Provost for Research's Funding Opportunities pages. 

Equity-focused event: MPHA Annual Conference

The Massachusetts Public Health Association will feature Praxis Project Director Xavier Morales as keynote speaker at this year's conference and meeting "Creating Health Equity by Building Community Power" on November 16 from 10:00 am to 1:00 pm. Morales will describe the new Social Determinants of Public Health Framework developed by the Praxis Project. Information and Registration.

About the Tufts Research Group on Equity in Health, Wealth & Civic Engagement and the Equity in America website

The Equity Research Group brings together researchers from across Tufts University to discuss and investigate equity and inequity in the United States and the world. In May-June 2020 and in April-May 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic, we conducted nationally representative surveys of Americans.  Scholars from across Tufts contributed to designing the surveys and are continuing to analyze the data they collected.
 
Our Equity in America website provides the opportunity to interactively explore and compare our data from both surveys. Check for yourself how race, ethnicity, age, gender, economic status, or presidential preferences might predict health, healthcare access, COVID experience, experience with discrimination, unhealthy environment, degree of civic engagement, and even pets. Find out more about our research, data, and members at EquityResearch.tufts.edu.

Research funding is provided by the Tufts University Office of the Vice Provost for Research (OVPR) and the Research and Scholarship Strategic Plan (RSSP). The Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life funded the visualization of our data on our website.