In the News
Citizen Science for Health Equity: Mobile app empowers community members to capture data and catalyze health-promoting changes
Our Voice is highlighted for projects supporting health equity across Stanford's campus, the Bay Area, and internationally along with new innovations using virtual reality to visualize solutions for barriers to healthy living in this Stanford Medicine Magazine article by Sara C.P. Williams
Community-Engaged Science for a Healthier Montbello
Making Walk Audits More Inclusive
Laurel Elementary in the City of San Mateo and Spruce Elementary in South San Francisco were able to engage their community members, school, and city staff in a meaningful way to make streets safer for walking and biking to school.
The Built Environment Matters for Mental Health
Mental health and wellbeing are major concerns on college campuses, and will only become more pressing as the COVID-19 pandemic continues. In this article, Simei Li describes her work with Our Voice to engage graduate students at Stanford in highlighting the influence of outdoor spaces and campus design on their mental health.
Historic Pike Place Market Becomes More Accessible for Older Adults
Amanda Frame, community outreach director for AARP Washington, contacted Stanford University’s Our Voice initiative, which engages “citizen scientists” to assess livability issues using its Healthy Neighborhood Discovery Tool mobile app.
Health in the rural West: Workshop explores how digital tools can help
"From staggering distances to care facilities to a scarcity of medical professionals," Minor said, "this family faces health care challenges that are unfamiliar to the vast majority of the U.S. population that lives in urban and suburban areas."
Familiarizing leaders in medicine, technology and other fields with the health challenges of people living in rural areas was one of the goals of the day-long workshop co-hosted by Stanford Medicine and Stanford University's Bill Lane Center for the American West. Read more about workshop here.
How Creative Science is Helping Make Neighborhoods Healthier
Dr. King and her colleagues at Stanford are attacking the physical inactivity problem with big data culled from health apps, as well as with local data collected by residents themselves. Their aim is to unmask the true story about our activity – or lack of it – and support practical neighborhood improvements to get us back on track.
Citizen Science Effort is Empowering Communities to Advance Health Equity
In rural villages, or big cities, individuals in communities can band together to make healthy changes. That's the driving belief behind the citizen science efforts orchestrated by Stanford's Our Voice team, which is led by Abby King, PhD, a professor of health research and policy and of medicine.
Street Smarts: Using Citizen-Scientists to Fight for Healthier Neighborhoods
Abby King and her team at the Stanford Prevention Research Center are developing a customized tablet for documenting neighborhood hazards, allowing them to create a social blueprint for teaching residents and grassroots organizations how to persuasively communicate these community needs to city planners.
Mobile Devices Help Remove Barriers to Fresh Food
In late 2010, researchers from the Stanford Prevention Research Center identified a number of challenges to healthful living for seniors. In response, the center established Neighborhood Eating and Activity Advocacy Teams (NEAAT) to organize seniors and improve their access to healthful food.
Latino Youth & Seniors Use Stanford Walkability App to Improve Street Conditions As Part of ‘Nuestra Voz’ Study
A team of researchers from the Healthy Aging Research and Technology Solutions (HARTS) lab at Stanford University are empowering Latino youth and seniors to work towards an improved built environment for their community.
Do You Bake Bread? You Just Might Be a Community Scientist.
‘By, for, and with the people’ studies exploring everything from crop pests to sourdough cultures are reshaping food and age research. As part of the Our Voice corner store study mentioned, eight local residents/participant/scientists collected information on two to three local stores using a mobile app to take photos, audio narratives, and descriptions of what they saw and how well it was working.
Presentations
Citizen Science as a Platform for Wellness Research
How can we harness technology for “good” in the health promotion/disease prevention area? Abby King discusses “community-engaged citizen science” and how it brings together researchers, public and private organizations, residents to harness the potential of IT and mobile devices to solve the health promotion challenges.
Reimagined in America: What Can the World Teach Us About Building a Culture of Health
Dr. Abby C. King shares her insights on community-based research through a webinar series with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The discussion focuss on what we can learn from other countries about using data to help community leaders improve health and well-being.
Read more about the webinar series here.