sustainable-wellness-innovation

City Tech Launches New Organization to Broaden Health Equity in Chicago

Wed, 13 Oct 2021 20:36:28 GMT

Sustainable Wellness Innovation Will Leverage Technology-Enabled Solutions to Improve Community Health and Wellness in Historically Underserved Communities

This press release was originally published on October 13, 2021 on www.CityTech.org. The release has been updated to reflect the new name of the organization, Sustainable Wellness Innovation.

Chicago – City Tech Collaborative (City Tech) is launching a new organization to leverage technology-enabled solutions and measurably improve community health delivery and wellness outcomes in Chicago’s most underserved communities.

The new organization, Sustainable Wellness Innovation (formerly SWITCH, which stands for Sustainable Wellness through Innovation, Technology, & Collaborative Health), is a collaboration platform that accelerates, innovates, and scales tech-enabled solutions for healthcare challenges. Sustainable Wellness Innovation will bring together skilled partners as well as engage residents and healthcare patients to ensure they have an active voice in solution creation. In addition, Sustainable Wellness Innovation will leverage a robust and proprietary racial equity and inclusion (REI) methodology to address inherent bias in existing solution development processes.

Sustainable Wellness Innovation builds on City Tech’s solutions and partnerships to create healthy cities such as expanding partnerships and social determinants of health for the Chicago Health Atlas , engaging residents to give feedback on new local air quality tools , and quantifying cities’ urban heat island reduction efforts . To prioritize accountability, equity, and inclusivity throughout solution development, City Tech developed REI tools that underpin each step of the process. General Counsel and Director of Legal Affairs & Growth Initiatives Angela E.L. Barnes will lead Sustainable Wellness Innovation, which she says is addressing the inherent inequities in the provision of services throughout Chicago.

“The pandemic has only exacerbated what we already know to be true: systematic disparities and biases create significant barriers to achieving health and wellness for all communities,” said Angela E.L. Barnes, founder of Sustainable Wellness Innovation. “These growing health disparities are even more evident in Chicago’s BIPOC communities on the South and West sides. With the development of Sustainable Wellness Innovation, I’m excited to deliver resident- and community-informed solutions that overcome these physical, digital, and socioeconomic barriers to health so that all communities can flourish.”

Verizon , the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) Innovation Center , and OSF HealthCare join Sustainable Wellness Innovation as partners. The UIC Innovation Center and OSF will leverage diverse and talented students from the Innovation Center to help grow Sustainable Wellness Innovation and its solutions. In September, Sustainable Wellness Innovation joined the 2021 Health Equity Innovation Accelerator Program powered by MATTER and YWCA of Metropolitan Chicago. The eight-week accelerator program is supporting Sustainable Wellness Innovation and other organizations through mentorship, exclusive resources and interactive curriculum from subject matter experts, and business concept validation to bring solutions to market.

Sustainable Wellness Innovation will also carry forward elements of City Tech’s solution development process and will leverage its proven methodology to identify urban issues, develop and implement solutions using technology and collaboration, and scale those solutions to drive broader impact. Using these tools, Sustainable Wellness Innovation will:

Enable healthcare systems to deconstruct barriers to equitable healthcare;
Empower residents with information, tools, technology, and models to successfully address community health inequities; and
Engage geographically targeted entrepreneurs and established corporate entities to develop community health wellness solutions and processes to be proven within the local community.

The organization’s first solution will focus on solving health inequities and building trust between healthcare providers and residents in historically underserved communities. Sustainable Wellness Innovation will leverage OSF’s existing CommunityConnect software and expand the program to non-OSF clinics and community-based organizations to serve Medicaid patients as well as integrate Sustainable Wellness Innovation’s racial equity and inclusion tool into the application’s care plan development. The software is currently in use at 14 OSF hospitals across Illinois; pandemic healthcare workers have used the software to keep individuals with a low risk of COVID-19 complications out of the hospital and identify appropriate interim teams and interventions.

“SWITCH is well-positioned to develop responsive solutions that address the diverse needs and priorities of community residents,” said Dr. John Vozenilek, Vice President, Chief Medical Officer for Innovation and Digital Health at OSF HealthCare. “We’re proud to be a partner in improving health and wellness for all communities.”

This effort highlights how removing technology barriers can result in more effective and equitable health outcomes. Community-based health workers and volunteers are key links between patients and care providers. Too often, however, these care team members do not readily have access to patients’ electronic health records, and therefore critical information can be missing from care planning, coordination, and management. Tools such as OSF CommunityConnect utilize social determinants of health as a critical component to create better patient care plans, track patient outcomes, and achieve measurable improvements in the health outcomes of communities.

Sustainable Wellness Innovation is one of several new efforts by City Tech to address industry-specific challenges in the rapidly evolving smart cities arena. City Tech has also announced the launch of Civic Infrastructure Collaborative , an independent nonprofit organization focused on driving public value from core urban infrastructure, and new tools to support and scale City Tech’s resident engagement program .

To learn more about City Tech’s future, please visit www.CityTech.org .

For more information about Sustainable Wellness Innovation, please email Angela E.L. Barnes at abarnes@sustainwellinnovation.org .

About Sustainable Wellness Innovation

Sustainable Wellness Innovation is a non-profit, collaboration platform that accelerates, innovates, and scales tech-enabled solutions. Our mission is to increase health equity and measurably improve community health delivery and wellness outcomes in Chicago’s most underserved communities through collaboratively developing solutions; engaging residents and patients to ensure they have an active voice in solution creation; and leveraging a robust racial equity and inclusion (REI) methodology to address inherent bias in existing solution development processes.

About City Tech Collaborative (City Tech)

City Tech is an urban solutions accelerator that tackles problems too big for any single sector or organization to solve alone. City Tech’s work uses IoT sensing networks, advanced analytics, and urban design to create scalable, market ready solutions. Current initiatives address mobility, healthy cities, connected infrastructure, and emerging growth opportunities. City Tech was born and raised in Chicago, and every city is a potential partner.

Non-Profit Boards Have Imperative Need to Change

Mon, 01 Mar 2021 22:15:03 GMT

This article was originally published on Center on Halsted's blog . Angela E.L. Barnes serves as Center on Halsted Board Chair.

Aly Kassam-Remtulla’s January 29, 2021 Chicago Tribune editorial, “Nonprofits need to catch up on diversifying their boards,” poignantly validated what I’ve personally experienced — the nonprofit world has struggled to change in the past 27 years. In it, Mr. Kassam-Remtulla states: “ A 2017 survey of 1,500 U.S.-based nonprofits showed that 84% of board members and 90% of board chairs were white. According to the reports, racial diversity on corporate boards had increased from 12.8% in 2010 to 16.1% in 2018. However, the 2017 figures in the nonprofit sector were nearly identical to 1994 bench marks.” Chicago Tribune

I was asked to serve on charitable boards very early in my professional career. Thus, I have spent the better part of the last 25 years serving on nonprofit boards and advisory committees in the city of Chicago. Invariably, these boards have been comprised of significantly more senior, wealthier and, predominately, white members. As a corporate attorney, I leveraged my professional experience and knowledge to create a comfort level for myself. I understood the legal obligations and governance expectations of board service and with this expertise, I knew that I added value beyond being Black and a woman. Much later in my years of service, I hit the diversity trifecta by also being openly gay.

My brown skin magnetically attracted the approving gaze of other board members who applauded the miniscule movement toward unstated racial, gender, and ethnic goals. The statement of “more” was often used as a barometer of success. As in, we now have more women, more minorities, and therefore, more time to effect change. Unfortunately, “more” often meant two or three Black or Latinx board members out of twenty-five. My mostly silent ruminations focused on the paucity of board members who could genuinely speak to the needs of the communities served. Every boardroom utterance of “they” was triggering and made me long for “they” to be at the table as we discussed policy and strategic direction. After several years of listening and learning, I finally asked the correct question: “Why aren’t “they” here?” Why is it an acceptable paradigm to establish a criterion for board membership that has a clearly disparate impact on the racial diversity of board membership and eliminates any significant income diversity? Who designed this paradigm? “Rather than waiting for external pressure to catalyze change, nonprofit boards can take steps to dismantle institutional racism.” — Kassam-Remtulla

In my experience, razor focus has always been on the individual giving capacity of board members. Read money. Money and the capacity to give is a sensitive topic. Historically, I have encouraged nonprofit boards to reexamine exceedingly high giving requirements. Requiring board members to contribute $10,000 or more for the privilege of sitting on a charitable board is clearly out of reach for most Americans. It is completely out of reach for many residents of the communities these organizations serve. Unsurprisingly, my suggestion was frequently dismissed by white board members; however, it was also met with resistance from minority board consultants who were hired to assist the organization in meeting board diversity goals. For many years I did not understand this reaction. So, what was I missing? It turns out I was missing a nuance that I am now committed to acknowledging.

While there are a handful of black unicorns, the uber wealthy African Americans, who can give significant amounts to various charities and who are, laughably, asked to sit on every charitable board (large or small); other African American (inclusive of the greater Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) community) give in different ways. It is challenging to ask a philanthropic Black person to give $10,000 or more to an organization predominately run by white people and governed by a predominately white board when that individual already contributes a significant amount of money, resources, and time to their church and to the various organizations in their community that may be small but are making significant differences that can be observed daily (e.g., food pantries, women’s shelters, after school programs). Given historic inequities that have critically hampered intergenerational wealth and continuing systemic racism that impacts access to capital for BIPOC communities, many people of color need to factor in financial reserves for family members that may need a little help meeting rent, car payments, or even capital to sustain businesses when lenders are unwilling.

On August 31, 2021, Chicago Foundation for Women hosted “Why People Give: A Focus on Black Philanthropy” ( CFW-Panel Discussion ). This panel discussion gave eloquent words to what many BIPOC communities already know. Many African Americans have the resources to give; they give generously to support their communities on a regular basis; and any suggestion that they do not is rightfully met with immediate scorn.

This may all sound as if a formidable rain cloud has hovered over the entirety of my charitable board service. To be clear, overwhelmingly, my board appointments have allowed me to serve the most remarkable organizations. I have been honored to help in any way possible to advance the critical missions of these organizations. The executive directors have been tremendous warriors, providing services and hope to many Chicago communities. I have learned life lessons from incredibly committed people, some of whom I am honored to call my friends. That being said, my observations of tokenism and glacial efforts by nonprofit boards to reflect the communities they served have solidified my current opinion on the deliberate steps nonprofit boards must take to advance racial equity and inclusion.

If your nonprofit board is not comprised of a majority of members from the communities it serves, it probably is not serving those communities as effectively as it could. Like it or not, boards heavily influence the strategic direction of an organization. Generally, executive directors strategize and prioritize based on the implicit biases of board members.

How should nonprofits diversify their boards? Just do it! Do it aggressively, authentically, and honestly. Seriously, if there are no current board members that can identify a pipeline of talented, caring, philanthropic, BIPOC individuals willing to give their time and treasure (in various forms) to an organization supporting the needs of underserved communities, then think about immediately reconstituting your board. The composition of those who sit around the table reflects the values of the organization. The criteria established to fill those board seats matter. Organizations should apply their racial equity and inclusion tool to the methods used to fill board seats.

At Center on Halsted, where I am honored to currently serve as Chair of the board of directors, our BIPOC board membership increased by 105% from fiscal year 2019 to current fiscal year 2021. This increase reflects representation from the Black, Latinx, and Asian communities. But we have much more to do. The entire organization has been working to better reflect the geographic, cultural, racial and gender diversity of the LGBTQ community and not only reflect white cisgender gay men. A board cannot genuinely ask its chief executive officer to make racial equity and inclusion a priority if the board itself is not committed to racial equity and inclusion.

Therein lies the rub — nonprofit boards will never be sufficiently diverse and inclusive until they stop their hollow handwringing. Challenge the paradigm of board service that has been accepted. Ask talented and committed members of BIPOC communities to join your boards and be honest about why you are asking. In parallel, make the systemic changes necessary to be authentically diverse and inclusive. “If nonprofits hope to make progress on addressing institutional racism, their boards will have to take a leadership role on diversity. This will require concrete and realistic goals, accountability for progress, and a shift in who sits around the board table. Our democracy will not be able to thrive until its very building blocks — which include nonprofit organizations — are thoroughly transformed”. — Kassam-Remtulla.

Communities that depend on the leadership of nonprofit boards to guide the delivery of goods and services effectively, efficiently, and empathetically into their communities do not have another 27 years to patiently wait for nonprofit boards to change.

About the Author: Angela E.L. Barnes serves as General Counsel and Director of Legal Affairs & Growth Initiatives for City Tech Collaborative and Center on Halsted's Board Chair. Angela is a corporate lawyer, risk management and compliance professional, and a life-long southside Chicagoan. She is a passionate advocate for providing services and resources to underserved geographic and demographic communities. Angela has proudly served on the board of directors for numerous Chicago area charitable organizations and is a member of the Racial Justice Diversity Committee for the Northern District of Illinois.

Racial Equity & Inclusion in Solution Development: City Tech’s Method to Meaningful Work

Tue, 15 Dec 2020 22:27:42 GMT

This article was originally published at City Tech Collaborative's website, www.CityTech.org .

Accelerating City Tech’s Racial Equity & Inclusion Work

We love cities for many reasons, but their complexity and diversity keep us interested most of all. City Tech’s mission is to accelerate technology-enabled solutions to make cities happier, healthier, and more productive. “Healthier” and “productive” seem clear, such as providing health data through the Chicago Health Atlas or making construction sites more efficient; but “happier” is not as obvious of a metric as the others. Cities are more than just buildings and industries; cities are made up of people all from different backgrounds with diverse experiences, and none of us can thrive – reach happiness, healthiness, and productivity – while racial, social, and economic inequity prevent everyone from contributing to and benefitting from a city’s success.

Through our solution development , City Tech reimagines cities as places where technology fuels equitable innovation, inclusion, and engagement. But we want to hold ourselves accountable to this belief.

Bringing together cross-sector partners and taking multiple views into account is our specialty; we include all stakeholders in the process of developing solutions to complex urban problems. Racial equity and inclusion are critical when developing these solutions for cities, but it can be challenging to formally and authentically incorporate in solution development.

To tackle this challenge, City Tech adopted a racial equity and inclusion curriculum for our team, as well as developed a process and tool to strengthen racial equity throughout our work.

COVID-19’s disproportionate impact on communities of color coupled with summer 2020’s spotlight on racial unrest urged us to accelerate and expand our existing racial equity and inclusion work and implement a formal process. We knew that standard diversity training was not going to be enough; we had to create a structure that helped us understand and evaluate our work. As Ben Hecht, CEO of Living Cities, wrote for the Harvard Business Review , “It’s clear that the suite of diversity and inclusion tools and practices that went mainstream in the ‘90s are grossly insufficient for racial equity work. Instead of driving fundamental changes in organizations, they largely focus on ‘velcro-ing’ new guidelines, practices, or programs onto the existing structures and culture of the workplace in an attempt to help employees of color better ‘fit in’ and succeed.”

We understand that many organizations may be in a similar situation: wanting to act, but unsure how to move from learning to action. Our goal was to create an actionable and sustainable process to make our work equitable and inclusive, and we hope our experience can provide an example for others.

Understanding Racism

Our team benefits from various backgrounds ranging from city government to urban planning to mental health, but that is not enough to make us experts in racial equity and inclusion. To effectively incorporate racial equity and inclusion into our solution development process, our team first set out to have a comprehensive understanding of the issues and develop a shared language.

Pooling our knowledge, researching examples, and leveraging existing tools, we created an interactive team curriculum to set our baseline understanding of race and racism. We recognize that everyone has different lived experiences and various comfort levels, so we emphasized creating a neutral space to introduce topics, encourage dialogue, and allow room for authentic conversations. Rather than call someone “out” for saying something problematic, we made it a priority to call others “in” and promote conversation. These expectations allowed the team to read and openly discuss publications about race as well as develop a more thorough understanding of our country’s history, present-day racism, and racism’s continuing impact. The team’s commitment to learning meant that each person was available, present, and participatory in every conversation.

Creating a Racial Equity Tool

With this baseline set, City Tech began translating this understanding of racial equity and inclusion to using levers – strategic elements of an organization that, when leveraged, build momentum towards a Race Equity Culture – that are tailored to be more relevant to our organization’s work and culture. This led to the development of a tool that allows us to review our work through a racial equity and inclusion lens.

Adapted from the Government Alliance on Race & Equity’s Racial Equity Toolkit , City Tech’s racial equity tool is comprised of tailored checklists that can be deployed throughout our solution development process; although simple to use, it has deeper impact in that it helps us consider the opportunities, community impact, and accountability to assess that each project is equitable and inclusive. This tool allows us to review our solutions from development to closeout and create a racial equity plan tailored to each solution. The project can be reevaluated at any point as the work progresses or new concerns arise. Following project completion, the tool contains a section to evaluate and communicate the results as well as internal scoring so we can continue to review City Tech’s portfolio and incorporate racial equity and inclusion as a core aspect throughout all of our work.

Taking Action

Incorporation of this training and tool is not a novel concept. We, however, felt it was important to create a structure to move from ideation to understanding to action.

While racial equity and inclusion training took place over four multi-hour sessions attended by the entire team, our work has just begun. Racial equity and inclusion work is more than a training; it is creating a culture that allows our team to ask hard questions, call each other in, and understand that we each go through life with different struggles.

Through our curriculum, we have developed a shared language and understanding of race and racism, as well as evaluated opportunities to improve the equitability and inclusivity of our work. Our process will be critical in keeping us consistent and bring us closer to our mission of making cities happier, healthier, and more productive.

Additional Reading

City Tech staff read a curated list of materials that speak to racial equity and inclusion generally, as well as specific pieces that help narrow on the topic within workplaces and cities, respectively. We recommend the following readings as just the tip of the iceberg:

America Wasn’t a Democracy, Until Black Americans Made It One [ New York Times ]
Awake to Work to Work [ Equity in the Center ]
Between the World and Me [ Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic ]
The Birth of the New American Aristocracy [ The Atlantic ]
The Coronavirus and the Cities We Need [ New York Times ]
How Segregation Caused Your Traffic Jam [ New York Times ]
Moving Beyond Diversity Toward Racial Equity [ Harvard Business Review ]
Racial Equity Toolkit [ Government Alliance on Race & Equity ]
Removing Barriers to Healthy Cities [ City Tech Collaborative ]
U.S. Businesses Must Take Meaningful Action Against Racism [ Harvard Business Review ]
White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack [ Peggy McIntosh ]
White Fragility [ Robin DiAngelo ]

About the Authors:
Angela E.L. Barnes serves as the General Counsel and Director of Legal Affairs & Growth Initiatives for City Tech Collaborative. She handles all legal matters and provides strategic leadership for the company’s growth. Angela is co-lead development of City Tech’s racial equity and inclusion framework and she is also spearheading City Tech’s Healthy Cities Initiative which will address multidimensional barriers facing communities that struggle to achieve positive health outcomes, ultimately producing and deploying a data analytics tool accessible to community organizations, governments, and other community health stakeholders.

Angela is a passionate advocate for providing services and resources to underserved geographic and demographic communities has extensive. Her non-profit board service includes, current Board Chair for the Center on Halsted, former Board Chair for SGA Youth & Family Services, immediate past Board Chair for Chicago Coalition for the Homeless (current Executive Committee member).

Angela was awarded her Juris Doctor from Columbia University and Bachelor of Arts from Wellesley College. She is a Certified Compliance and Ethics Professional (CCEP) and a member of the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics (SCCE).

Meera Raja is the Senior Manager of Solution Design and Program Development at City Tech Collaborative. In this role, Meera works as a member of the City Solutions team to design and execute new programs and services. Meera also leads City Tech's 1,600+ -member Civic User Testing Group (CUTgroup) in Chicago and coordinates expansion of the CUTgroup model to additional cities across North America. Prior to joining the City Tech team, Meera was the Associate Director of Research Innovation at University of Chicago, where she developed strategies to advance nascent and complex research. Meera was previously a consultant for ZS Associates, working on data-driven solutions for the pharmaceutical space. Meera completed her Ph.D. and Postdoc in Chemistry from Northwestern University and received her undergraduate degree in the same field from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign.

Laura Vecchetti Laura Vecchetti is the Communications and Grants Manager at City Tech Collaborative. As a member of the Partnerships and Communications Team, Laura works to connect City Tech with the community. Prior to joining the team, Laura was the Development and Communications Coordinator at Nexus Onarga Academy, a national nonprofit providing specialized mental health services for children, youth, and families, where she helped secure funding for therapeutic programs. In all her roles, Laura enjoys elevating nonprofits’ missions through connection and storytelling. Laura holds a bachelor’s degree in Public Relations from Bradley University.

About City Tech Collaborative (City Tech): City Tech is an urban solutions accelerator that tackles problems too big for any single sector or organization to solve alone. City Tech’s work uses IoT sensing networks, advanced analytics, and urban design to create scalable, market ready solutions. Current initiatives address advanced mobility, healthy cities, connected infrastructure, and emerging growth opportunities. City Tech was born and raised in Chicago, and every city is a potential partner. Visit www.CityTech.org .

Removing Barriers to Healthy Cities

Thu, 25 Jun 2020 21:08:10 GMT

This blog was originally published on City Tech Collaborative's website, www.CityTech.org .

How Collaborative, Technology-Enabled Solutions Can Dismantle Barriers to Community Health and Wellness

We define healthy cities in terms of community goals and outcomes that illuminate concrete needs, barriers, and solution opportunities.

Imagine a community where one can rise for an early morning jog, stop at the local grocery store for coffee and fruit, pop into the neighborhood health clinic to check on a persistent cough, then make way via bus, train or bike to a well-paying job not more than twenty minutes away. This community has adequate affordable housing, diverse and sustainable employment, and accessible and reliable transportation. Its residents feel safe and have access to current and emerging technology, quality education, physical activity, nutrition, and, of course, adequate health care.

This example is illustrative of many measures of a “healthy” community; but, for many residents, such can only be imagined.

Systemic disparities and biases create significant barriers to achieving health and wellness for all communities.

Communities that struggle to obtain or maintain key elements of a healthy community require targeted resources and efficient solution deployment to address deficiencies. From Seattle, to Chicago, to New York[1] many cities have acknowledged that what underpins historical lack of success in building, maintaining, and supporting healthy communities is a reluctance to acknowledge and address systemic disparities and biases caused by issues such as racism and gender inequality. Many municipalities, philanthropic organizations, and local community organizations provide services and resources to address the resulting symptoms of these inequities; however, healthy communities cannot emerge until we remove the barriers that keep residents from accessing those resources and keep communities entwined in racism, gender inequality, and other systemic issues.

Physical, digital, and socioeconomic barriers impede healthy communities.

There are numerous ways to categorize barriers that impede a community’s ability to obtain and maximize resources to eliminate systemic disparities and equities. Below is a structure to help identify the barriers, define them, and then develop sustainable solutions to address each.

Developing and deploying solutions for healthy cities will require structured collaboration, standardized data, and technology to capture, track, and scale impact. Solutions that address physical, digital and socioeconomic barriers will broaden the impact of future efforts.

Complex Problems Require Collaboration

COVID-19 has highlighted the devastating and disparate impact health crises have on vulnerable communities. At the same time, the pandemic has inspired a renewed focus on pledging resources to those communities. As efforts evolve, community stakeholders must be mindful of the strength and success of coordinated solution development and deployment as opposed to fragmented support or duplicated efforts. Complex problems that span neighborhoods, entities, and municipalities cannot be solved alone.

To create healthy cities, we must first collaborate to effectively design and deploy technology-enabled solutions that redress health inequities. Grass roots organizations are closest to the pain of their communities and know the immediate and sustained needs of that community; philanthropic organizations have access to data and funding; thought leaders have the benefit of deep analysis; technology partners have the platforms that can be leveraged and scaled; and cities want their residents to be happy and healthy. Cross-sector collaboration brings together expertise, insight, and representation across all stakeholders, ensures that the right problems are being address, and leads to better design and implementation of sustainable solutions.

Using Data to Understand Impact

Solving health inequities requires implementation of holistic, sustainable solutions that remove barriers and allow for stakeholders to effectively redress root causes of those inequities. Problems as complex as workforce development, food and housing insecurity, and internet and technology access span systems, jurisdictions, and service providers; current lack of data standards across systems makes it difficult to truly understand the impact of current and future solutions. However, expansive data analytics of health indicators would allow philanthropic groups, community organizations, and cities to see correlations and downstream impact early on. We must measure health through broad lenses that capture both the root causes and related symptoms to truly understand inequities and the impact of targeted solutions.

Technology is Key to Sustainability

Technology can play a critical role in collecting and monitoring data as well as solving specific problems related to health inequities. Having the data that supports health disparities is but one component of understanding how to address the issues that restrict equitable positive health outcomes throughout urban environments.

Technology solutions allow dynamic and creative responses to complex problems. Technology also holds the ability to replicate and scale solutions so they can apply to an array of challenges. Whether incorporating new urban design aspects (such as flexible design of streets), advanced analytics (including machine learning, data science, and artificial intelligence), or sensing networks (nodes in our environment that collect and communicate data), technology will be a critical component in developing sustainable solutions that can be scaled to other uses and cities.

For example, City Tech’s Urban Heat Response solution integrated NASA Landsat data on climate and weather data to improve design and infrastructure to mitigate urban heat islands. The outcome was a user-centric tool leveraging environmental data to identify hot spots for further analysis, test the effects of city interventions designed to reduce heat, and create a baseline for future urban planning.

It is crucial that these technologies be developed and implemented while applying a racial equity lens to ensure they do not create more biases and reinforce existing barriers.

Healthy cities are achievable if we work together.

No one can thrive while racial, social, and economic injustice prevent everyone from contributing to and benefiting from a city’s success. Many organizations are already addressing symptoms of these injustices and working towards a healthier community. However, before we can truly address root causes, we must first remove the barriers that prevent communities from even accessing these resources in the first place. Data and technology will play an essential part creating equitable, sustainable, and scalable solutions for healthy communities – but only if we can work together.

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[1] Chicago, New York, Seattle, Minneapolis, Madison, and Portland are among American cities that have launched racial equity initiative to address systemic structural issues underpinning poverty, health, unemployment, etc.

About the Author: Angela E.L. Barnes serves as the General Counsel and Director of Legal Affairs & Growth Initiatives for City Tech Collaborative. City Tech is a nonprofit urban solutions accelerator that tackles problems too big for any single sector or organization to solve alone. Working with cross-sector teams, City Tech develops scalable, technology-enabled solutions to make cities happier, healthier, and more productive. In her role, Angela handles all legal matters and provides strategic leadership for the company’s growth. Angela is co-leading City Tech’s racial equity and inclusion framework and she is also spearheading City Tech’s Healthy Cities Initiative which will address multidimensional barriers facing communities that struggle to achieve positive health outcomes, ultimately producing and deploying a data analytics tool accessible to community organizations, governments, and other community health stakeholders.

Angela is a passionate advocate for providing services and resources to underserved geographic and demographic communities has extensive. Her non-profit board service includes, current Board Chair for the Center on Halsted, former Co-Chair of the GLAAD Chicago Leadership Council, former Board Chair for SGA Youth & Family Services, former Board Chair for Chicago Coalition for the Homeless (current Executive Committee member). Angela co-founded SHE100, a philanthropic giving circle of lesbian and queer women supporting organizations throughout Chicago. She also leads the Women’s Action Council at the Center on Halsted focused on outreach and inclusion of the queer women’s community in Chicago.

Angela was awarded her Juris Doctor from Columbia University and Bachelor of Arts from Wellesley College. She is a Certified Compliance and Ethics Professional (CCEP) and a member of the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics (SCCE).