On March 23rd, Bridging Health & Community will host a free webinar featuring Sandra Lobo and Katherine Mella from the Bronx Healthy Buildings Program. This will be a chance for a ‘deep dive’ conversation in which participants can ask questions and gain insights on how lessons learned from this initiative can be applied in their own contexts. Sandra’s and Katherine’s biographies are below.
- A Deep Dive with the Bronx Healthy Buildings Program
- Friday, March 23rd, 2018
- 12:30pm – 2pm ET
- Register here
The Bronx Healthy Buildings Program was one of two case examples presented at our symposium, Community Agency & Health, in May 2017. It was part of a panel discussion intended to illustrate what it looks like for the health sector and local communities to work together in ways that are inclusive, participatory, and responsive.
For many participants, this panel discussion was a highlight of the symposium. They found it inspiring to see what could be. They also appreciated the candor with which the two teams talked about the struggles and challenges they experienced along the way. Many let us know that they wished they had even more time to ask the kinds of questions that would get into the operational realities of how things worked in the two case examples.
This inspired us to create this free webinar, a space for a smaller group of participants to have a more intimate, implementation-oriented conversation about one of the examples. Register soon as space is limited.
In the webinar, Katherine and Sandra will give a brief overview of the program (participants will also receive summary materials in advance), which will be followed by a conversation about how some of the 12 principles that Bridging Health & Community (BH&C) has described resonate with their experiences. After that there will be an open-ended discussion, facilitated by Bridget Kelly of BH&C, in which participants can raise challenges they are experiencing in their work and discuss how lessons from the Bronx case example might shape ideas for solutions to try.
We’ll also set aside time at the end of the webinar for Sandra and Katherine to have a chance to draw on the insights of the group around a current challenge that they are experiencing.
Sandra Lobo serves as the Executive Director of the Northwest Bronx Community & Clergy Coalition (NWBCCC), a 42-year-old member led organization that unites diverse people and institutions to fight for racial and economic justice through intergenerational organizing. A first-generation immigrant and resident of the Bronx for over 20 years, Sandra’s areas of focus are developing leadership of color, creating long term organizational sustainability, building community-shared wealth and ownership, and collective governance over local assets through an anti-racist lens. Before this role, Sandra was trained in anti-oppression organizing and leadership development incorporating a restorative justice framework, and served as Director of the Dorothy Day Center for Service and Justice at Fordham University for 17 years, shifting the focus of the Center’s work from a charity to a justice model.
Katherine Mella is a Program Associate at the MIT Community Innovators Lab, working as part of the Bronx Cooperative Development Initiative (BCDI). BCDI is a network of grassroots leaders, anchor institutions, elected officials, and finance partners who are working together to achieve a sustainable, equitable and democratic economy in the Bronx. Katherine leads BCDI’s community heath agenda, leveraging opportunities tied to local and national healthcare system transformation, and using the social determinants of health as a key framework. In this role, she also provides community partners with technical assistance in the areas of strategic planning, partnership development, project coordination, and evaluation. Katherine earned her Bachelor’s degree from Brown University in Urban Studies and completed her Master’s in City Planning at MIT.
Register for the webinar here, and do so soon as space is limited!
The BH&C Team
