This article was written as part of The Michigan Daily’s investigation into the current state and future of health equity in Michigan. Read other stories from the project here.
The Michigan Health Equity Challenge, a program conducted by the University of Michigan, is an opportunity for select graduate students to propose an idea to solve health equity issues in partnership with an organization in southeast Michigan. It was held in collaboration with the MolinaCares Accord, a branch of Molina Healthcare that focuses on improving health care through investments. The issues focused on by students stem from racial inequities, socioeconomic instability and food insecurity, among others. In the challenge, students are can submit a project proposal to improve public health issues. A panel of experts then reviews the proposals and selects 10 finalists to receive a $2,000 award and mentorship on how to implement their ideas.
Rackham student Brooke Troxmondo studies environmental justice and urban and regional planning and is one of the 10 finalists. She became interested in health equity in 2023 when she was a Dow Sustainability fellow with the Graham Sustainability Institute on campus and worked on a project with Habitat for Humanity on indicators of potential health concerns in housing.
Troxmondo and her graduate student colleague Natalie Deliso created a healthy housing building strategies booklet to help mitigate health issues caused by unreliably built housing. Poorly built housing is often characterized by components like lead or unhealthy building materials, which can have negative effects on health including obesity, asthma and diabetes. In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Troxmondo said she heard about the Health Equity Challenge last November and thought it was a great way to implement change at a local level.
“My specialization is environmental justice,” Troxmondo said. “So from that perspective, the current administration, the (The Inflation Reduction Act) and (The American Rescue Plan Act) have a lot of funding that helps communities at the local level be able to center equity in the work they’re doing.”
Troxmondo said she feels that the answer to solving public health inequities is a national health care system, but acknowledges that a smaller scale may be the best place to start.
“The big answer is a national health system, where health care overall is just accessible to everyone no matter of their employment status or their income or preexisting conditions, or identities, or anything like that,” Troxmondo said. “That’s obviously a really big task, so thinking about steps more long term, I think collecting the data to know where those disparities lie is a really big step in order to identify areas that can benefit from additional resources.”
Troxmondohas been working with Habitat for Humanity of Oakland County in hopes of winning the challenge and receiving a grant, specifically to deal with health issues due to older housing.
Rackham student Damilola Olukorede, a project finalist, is working toward a doctorate in medicinal chemistry at the University. She has always considered herself interested in health equity but first began to recognize disparities in health care during an internship with a pharmaceutical company.
“I was working in regulatory affairs and I noticed that mostly clinical trials were not being done in the African population,” Olukorede said. “Recognizing that disparity was something that really motivated me to want to find a bridge for that disparity.”
For the challenge, Olukorede proposed an app that would be used to search for cancer clinical trials in Michigan.
“Local voices are just beginning to rise to speak out about all of these things about people who are not equally represented, who don’t have equal opportunities for health,” Olukorede said. “Disparity is not a new thing, but increased attention is being drawn.”
Social Work student L Tantay, one of the finalists, said they became interested in the Health Equity Challenge after completing an internship related to sexual health counseling. Tantay said both the internship and the COVID-19 pandemic opened their eyes to issues of health equity. Their project was focused on increasing mental health care for Queer and transgender communities of Color in Detroit through direct mental health funding and capacity-building training, which develops skills, abilities and resources for communities to thrive.
“It’s really apparent in the numbers that when you isolate for all different variables, race is one of, if not the main factor, in whether or not someone has access to health care and is going to have a healthy life,” Tantay said. “I think first and foremost, we need to be really conscious and dedicated to eradicating health inequity for Black folks, Indigenous folks and other people of Color.”
In addition to issues of racial health equity, students in the challenge are also exploring how life factors tie into health equity.
Public Health student Mehak Bhansali, a project finalist, is obtaining a master’s degree in health management and policy. She became interested in the Health Equity Challenge after working with women experiencing intimate partner violence and finding that any survivors did not have access to adequate resources for support.
“At that point, I had the idea of creating an app where all the resources were in one place,” Bhansali said.
The app would help ensure a larger population could access the necessary resources for their safety and health, especially those who are most vulnerable.
“We aren’t reaching the populations and communities that need it the most,” Bhansali said. “We’re seeing a lot of groups, maybe racially minority groups or individuals with lower income that just aren’t getting better and are getting worse (in terms of health).”
Bhansali said understanding the communities she works with was a key theme in her research.
All of the finalists shared the goal of expanding their knowledge and educating people outside of the University community on health equity issues.
“As a student, sometimes it feels like our work just stays in the bubble of academia, so I just really appreciate the opportunity to be able to spread the word about the work that I’m doing and hopefully have it impact more folks that way,” Troxmondo said.
Daily Staff Reporter Gillian Reynolds can be reached at gillyr@umich.edu.