The Lender Center for Social Justice 2024-26 faculty-student fellows research team studied how housing impacts health in 性视界.
Housing, Health and Community: What 性视界 Is Telling Us
Where you live affects how healthy you are. That idea sits at the center of Miriam Mutambudzi鈥檚 research鈥攁nd behind the two-year project she led as the 2024鈥26 .
is an associate professor of public health in the . Her work explores how conditions like housing, employment and economic stability shape people鈥檚 health over their lifetimes.
For the Lender fellowship, she and a team of student fellows set out to examine housing as a structural determinant of health, reviewing the research evidence and engaging directly with community members to understand how this plays out in 性视界.
Working in partnership with the University鈥檚 and the , the team reviewed research on housing and health, then engaged community members directly through the (TMR) series. The fellowship culminated when student fellows presented as panelists at a TMR session鈥攐ffering their findings to the public as emerging experts in the field.
We spoke with Mutambudzi recently about the team鈥檚 work.
What did the community tell you that the data couldn鈥檛?
Community voices from sessions like 鈥淭he Conditions of Home: Health, Safety and Access鈥 described how housing quality, environmental safety, neighborhood conditions and instability affect daily stress, food access and overall health and well-being in ways that do not show up in traditional datasets.
These conversations also revealed gaps in existing evidence, particularly around how local housing policies, service systems and lived experiences intersect in 性视界鈥攁reas that would benefit from further research to better quantify these issues and understand their impact.
How did TMR become part of that work?
As the landscape for relevant research shifted in ways outside our control, it became clear that data analysis alone was insufficient to fully capture the lived realities of housing disparities in 性视界. TMR was a natural fit, as the focus was on housing and provided an opportunity to incorporate community-engaged work in a meaningful way, one I don鈥檛 think we could have replicated any other way.
What role did the student fellows play?
They were genuine research partners, leading development of data briefings drawn from publicly available sources and peer-reviewed literature, then building presentations for the TMR sessions that framed topics for the roundtable鈥檚 participants.
Prior to each session, fellows met with panelists to learn about their lived experience in 性视界 and their work, using these conversations to develop informed moderator questions for the roundtable discussions. That process ensured that each session reflected both rigorous evidence and real community knowledge.
How has this project informed your ongoing research?
This work has helped me see how housing shapes health and everyday life beyond what quantitative data alone can fully capture. It has broadened my understanding of how housing, as a structural determinant, independently shapes health outcomes and survival. I look forward to bringing these community insights into that ongoing research.
What does this work mean for people living in 性视界, and other areas like it?
The patterns we are seeing in 性视界 connect to broader research on how structural disparity in housing shape health and survival across communities. This work points to the need for both local action and research that can better quantify these impacts and inform policy and practice.
Student Fellows
The 2024鈥26 Lender student fellow team consists of:
- Tomiwa 鈥淭ommy鈥 DaSilva 鈥26, a double major in public health and policy studies and citizenship and civic engagement in the Maxwell School
- Adara 鈥淒arla鈥 Hobbs 鈥22, G鈥26, a graduate student in Pan-African studies in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S) and recipient of a certificate of advanced studies in public management and policy from the Maxwell School. She is an alumna of the communication and rhetorical studies program in the College of Visual and Performing Arts
- Jamea Candy Johnson 鈥25, G鈥26, a graduate student in public health in the Maxwell School and an alumna of the psychology program in A&S
- Sabrina Lussier 鈥26, a triple major in geography, citizenship and civic engagement, and environmental sustainability and policy in the Maxwell School
- Shreya Potluri 鈥27, an architecture major in the School of Architecture
