EP 95: Designing Environmental Health | Jennifer D. Roberts

Design Lab with Bon Ku

How can we microdose nature into the built environment?

What are the benefits of green spaces and who has access to them?

What’s the story behind Billie Holiday’s song Strange Fruit?

Jennifer D. Roberts is a tenured Associate Professor in the Department of Kinesiology, School of Public Health at the University of Maryland College Park (UMD). Dr. Roberts is also the Founder and Director of the Public Health Outcomes and Effects of the Built Environment (PHOEBE) Laboratory as well as the Co-Founder and Co-Director of NatureRx@UMD, an initiative that emphasizes the natural environmental benefits interspersed throughout and around the UMD campus. Her scholarship focuses on the impact of built, social, and natural environments, including the institutional and structural inequities of these environments, on the public health outcomes of marginalized communities. More specifically, much of her research has explored the dynamic relationship between environmental, social, and cultural determinants of physical activity and using empirical evidence of this relationship to infer complex health outcome patterns and disparities as well as instigate a powerful shift that recognizes, breaks, and transforms these conditions and determinants of health.

Episode Links and Mentions:

https://jenniferdeniseroberts.com/

Article: Mental health initiative connects UMD students with the outdoors

Article: Advancing Health and Sustainability in Baltimore

Video: Designing on the Front Lines: Safer Spaces

Book Rec: All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solution for the Climate Crisis

Restaurant Rec: Seoul Food

Follow Jennifer: Twitter | LinkedIn

Episode Website/Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/designlabpod/jenniferroberts

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Production by Robert Pugliese

Edit by Fernando Queiroz

Cover Design by Eden Lew

Theme song by Emmanuel Houston

Indexed in the Library of Congress: ISSN 2833-2032