Hello, I am Kathy Ware, MSN, CRNP and I am not currently working with GIS but I have been actively looking for an opportunity to work on public health/social justice issues such gun violence, hunger, and the opioid crisis and this of course involves racial inequities and institutional racism as well as mass incarceration and many other severely flawed policies. My ideal group would be a task force, work group, organization etc that brings together people from across sectors (i.e. health care, IT/GIS, all levels of education/academia, community organizing, justice/law, finance/business, sociology, faith based groups, policy makers) to identify solutions to these complex social problems which directly affect the health of individuals, families, and communities. I would welcome any opportunity, paid or not. Do any of your organizations have such a cross-sector group? In addition to my work as a nurse practitioner, I have worked with health policy and legislative advocacy for years, primarily related to increasing access to care. One solution in particular is school based health centers. I have worked with community coalitions related to health issues such as tobacco use. In addition to wide spread smoking cessation efforts, on the prevention side we educated groups on long standing unethical marketing practices targeting communities of color and on tobacco related diseases that are over represented in communities of color. On one project, we used GIS mapping to locate tobacco retailers in low income communities and were then able to identify those that were selling to under-aged minors. As an aside, my daughter is a GIS certified person and I, of course, have read many research articles that used GIS as a tool within study design and data gathering and have been impressed with it’s power, applicability and usefulness. I appreciate any and all info you may be able to provide and thanks for all of the work you do. #social justice #health #racial inequity #solutions
