By Yesenia Barrios This story was published in the Bronx Times on April 4, 2022. On a cold Sunday afternoon, Mike Cintron is sweeping the sidewalk in front of his home on Rosedale Avenue in the Bronx. The wind has scattered garbage from piles of waste paper, household trash, broken furniture and used electronics that...
Category: Health equity
Systemic racism spurs COVID-19 to hit Florida communities of color harder
By Julianne Hill, Justin Fernandez, Gabriella Fuster, and Melissa Noda Urban Health Media Project Florida’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic unmasked disparities in healthcare based on socioeconomic factors, disproportionately hurting communities of color in the state while exposing weaknesses in leadership, according to a Florida health expert. “We know from our country’s history that responding...
Early screening for learning disabilities ‘would make a huge difference’
By Aileen Delgado, Courtney Curtis and Rick Hampson Urban Health Media Project WASHINGTON -- Frank Pinckney wonders what his life could have been like if his parents and teachers had believed what he now believes: that as a child he had a learning disability, attention deficit disorder (ADHD) and suffered from trauma after a sexual...
Health disparities hit survival rates for cancer, COVID
By Jayne O’Donnell, Julianne Hill, and Enijah Brennon Leana Wen knew her mother, who got winded walking to her car, wasn’t simply anxious or depressed. But that’s what the medical doctors treating Sandy Ying Zhang thought and that’s what mattered. It was the early 2000’s and Wen was in medical school, but her mother scoffed,...
Meet Krystal Li: UHMP student journalist and workshop participant
By Aileen Delgado Krystal Li, a senior at Coral Reef High School in Miami, was one of more than 20 students who participated in UHMP’s “Homesick” spring workshop. She says she jumped at the opportunity. It was “a good opportunity for me,’’ she says, “because I was relatively new to journalism at the time, and...
UHMP teaches students to tell the health and social justice stories of the unrepresented
Hermes Falcon Urban Health Media Project Urban Health Media Project introduces middle and high school students in underrepresented communities to journalism and teaches them how to cover health and social issue topics that touch their lives. “I want to be a journalist,” says Sreehitha Gandluri, a student at Our Lady of Good Counsel High School...
The Pandemic Deepens Miami’s Housing Affordability Crisis for Immigrant Families
Aileen Delgado, Kymani Hughes, Krystal Li, Angely Pena-Agramonte, Karla Perez and Kelly Sanchez In October 2020, six months into the COVID pandemic, the landlord of a Palmetto Bay apartment where then-high school senior Arianna had lived for more than a decade with her sister and parents, delivered shocking news: The family had a month to move...
Health Journalism At Richard Wright Public Charter School
Students at Richard Wright Public Charter School for Journalism and Media Arts had the opportunity to learn about journalism this academic school year in a new way. The Urban Health Media Project partnered with Richard Wright to co-instruct a journalism course on health issues that helped students acquire skills such as interviewing, writing, creating visuals...
As Grief Sweeps Nation from Violence, COVID-19 Deaths, Survivors ‘Suffering in Silence’
Josephine Chu, Amora Campbell and Madeleine Voth, Urban Health Media Project This story appeared in the Washington Informer on Jan. 9, 2021. Ruth Rollins dedicated her life to helping survivors of domestic violence as an advocate in Boston. Yet when her 21-year-old son Warren Daniel Hairston was killed in community violence in the city’s Roxbury...
Community Work, Gospel Music Helps Grieving Mother Recover from Daughter’s Death
Amora Campbell, Urban Health Media Project Rita Henderson, a devout churchgoer, lost her faith for more than a decade after her only child died of a fatal heart murmur in 2008. “I hated God,” said Henderson. She said she had no reason to believe the God she had devoutly worshiped for her entire life would...