Perhaps more than any other American city, Chicago has been a center for the study of both urban history and economic inequity. Community Health Equity assembles a century of research to show the range of effects that Chicago’s structural socioeconomic inequalities have had on patients and medical facilities alike. The work collected here makes clear that when a city is sharply divided by power, wealth, and race, the citizens who most need high-quality health care and social services have the greatest difficulty accessing them. Achieving good health is not simply a matter of making the right choices as an individual, the research demonstrates: it’s the product of large-scale political and economic forces. Understanding these forces, and what we can do to correct them, should be critical not only to doctors but to sociologists and students of the urban environment—and no city offers more inspiring examples for action to overcome social injustice in health than Chicago.

In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.

In the last several years, much has been written about growing economic challenges, increasing income inequality, and political polarization in the United States. Addressing these new realities in America's metropolitan regions, this book argues that a few lessons are emerging: first, inequity is bad for economic growth; second, bringing together the concerns of equity and growth requires concerted local action; and third, the fundamental building block for doing this is the creation of diverse and dynamic epistemic (or knowledge) communities, which help to overcome political polarization and to address the challenges of economic restructuring and social divides.

Publisher description.

This book presents a powerful model for using relational trust, cultural humility, and appreciation of diverse perspectives to build learning communities that collectively uplift all students and all members of the learning community.

This volume proposes that the work of community colleges has expanded beyond equity into providing a true barrier-free learning environment for students, one that is attuned to justice. The essays included here serve as evidence and examples of the productive ways in which educators may bring theory and practice to bear on each other, which in turn may allow community college faculty, staff, and administrators to reexamine the role of a community college as a space for justice. Topics explored with this volume include liberatory educational practices in and out of the classroom, transforming classrooms into the site of collaboration and contestation, and unique visions of how to promote opportunity for marginalized students. Ultimately, the goal of this edited volume is to explore and encourage community college educators to understand the integral role they play in bringing transformative justice to their students and their communities.

The evidence-based strategies in this volume close the achievement gap among students from all sociological backgrounds. Designed according to local needs assessments, they provide the services, programs, initiatives, and relationships that are crucial for children's success in school and life. These practices and programs include afterschool and summer sessions, early-childhood education, school-linked health and mental health services, family engagement, and youth leadership opportunities. This book addresses the policy and funding requirements that help these partnerships thrive and offers effective counterarguments against those who would question their value. The text describes strategies that work in both rural and urban contexts and includes a chapter evaluating school-community partnerships across the world. Because it involves collaborations across professions and organizations, the book's interdisciplinary approach will appeal to those in social work, education, psychology, public health, counseling, nursing, and public policy.

Cartoonist Ellen Forney explores the relationship between “crazy” and “creative” in this graphic memoir of her bipolar disorder, woven with stories of famous bipolar artists and writers. Shortly before her thirtieth birthday, Forney was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Flagrantly manic and terrified that medications would cause her to lose creativity, she began a years-long struggle to find mental stability while retaining her passions and creativity. Searching to make sense of the popular concept of the crazy artist, she finds inspiration from the lives and work of other artists and writers who suffered from mood disorders, including Vincent van Gogh, Georgia O’Keeffe, William Styron, and Sylvia Plath. She also researches the clinical aspects of bipolar disorder, including the strengths and limitations of various treatments and medications, and what studies tell us about the conundrum of attempting to “cure” an otherwise brilliant mind. Darkly funny and intensely personal, Forney’s memoir provides a visceral glimpse into the effects of a mood disorder on an artist’s work, as she shares her own story through bold black-and-white images and evocative prose.

In the United States, people of color are disproportionally more likely to live in environments with poor air quality, in close proximity to toxic waste, and in locations more vulnerable to climate change and extreme weather events. In many vulnerable neighborhoods, structural racism and classism prevent residents from having a seat at the table when decisions are made about their community. In an effort to overcome power imbalances and ensure local knowledge informs decision-making, a new approach to community engagement is essential. In Resilience for All, Barbara Brown Wilson looks at less conventional, but often more effective methods to make communities more resilient. She takes an in-depth look at what equitable, positive change through community-driven design looks like in four communities—East Biloxi, Mississippi; the Lower East Side of Manhattan; the Denby neighborhood in Detroit, Michigan; and the Cully neighborhood in Portland, Oregon. These vulnerable communities have prevailed in spite of serious urban stressors such as climate change, gentrification, and disinvestment. Wilson looks at how the lessons in the case studies and other examples might more broadly inform future practice. She shows how community-driven design projects in underserved neighborhoods can not only change the built world, but also provide opportunities for residents to build their own capacities.

"The contents of this book are extremely timely as more US public schools are moving to "push-in" programs for their English Learners (ELs) or following the increasing trend to launch DL programs as a way to offer instruction support for ELs. In this book, the authors use culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) families as an umbrella term to discuss ESL and DL families. This book is intended to reach ESL teachers, content-area teachers teaching ELs, dual language teachers, administrators, and school personnel who work and support CLD parents. Despite the varied instructional approaches to addressing ELs needs, limited scholarship exits on the marginalization of CLD parents as leaders in the decision-making processes of today's schools. This book examines the divisive practices of existing parental involvement models that prevent parental engagement in ESL and DL contexts; the importance of addressing parental engagement amidst current political discourse surrounding immigration that further alienates EL parents; and the need for more proactive, action-based models that identify contributions of parents and community partners. By re-defining parental engagement as a mutually inclusive theoretical perspective, school, community and home become conduits for transforming student learning and improving school climate"--