A Syndemic 400 Years in the Making

Toxic Racism, Pollution, Climate, and Viruses with Dr. Sacoby Wilson

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 12 at 12:00 pm | Zoom

In the United States, Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) have been impacted by systemic racism and structured inequalities since the founding of this country.  Communities of color do not have just access to good quality housing, jobs, recreation, food infrastructure, transit, or healthcare.  These same communities have been used as sacrifice zones for environmental hazards due to environmental racism, experience climate change impacts differentially, and now are dying at higher rates from COVID-19 during the viral pandemic.  These communities are not experiencing just one pandemic, but multiple pandemics simultaneously. This is known as a syndemic. In this lecture, Dr. Sacoby Wilson will discuss the syndemic that has been the scourge of BIPOC communities in the United States.  He will discuss why these communities are experiencing a syndemic and what needs to be done to stop the syndemic including how he is working with frontline and fenceline environmental justice communities in community-based science projects.

To register, please email Michelle Sayles at msayles@clarku.edu.

About Dr. Sacoby Wilson

Dr. Sacoby Wilson is an Associate Professor with the Maryland Institute for Applied Environmental Health at University of Maryland-College Park, and serves as Director of the Community Engagement, Environmental Justice and Health (CEEJH) laboratory.  Dr. Wilson has over 15 years of experience as an environmental health scientist in the areas of exposure science, environmental justice, environmental health disparities, community-engaged research including crowd science and community-based participatory research (CBPR), water quality analysis, air pollution studies, built environment, industrial animal production, climate change, community resiliency, and sustainability.  He works primarily in partnership with community-based organizations to study and address environmental justice and health issues and translate research to action.

You can learn more about Dr. Wilson’s work by listening to his recent interview on Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting. He speaks out about the Trump administration’s executive order to abolish federal advisory committees guiding environmental policy. Listen to the interview here.