Eugenia (Gina) South, MD, MS, and Atheendar Venkataramani, MD, PhD, first met over two decades ago as students at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Years later, they ran into each other in Blockley Hall at Penn and realized they had become colleagues. More than that, they shared a commitment as researchers and advocates for public policy that looked at the underlying reasons why people were healthy, or not, due to social determinants of health.
“We had to do something with the environment and economics,” South said, “with this idea of getting concentrated investment in small geographic areas to disrupt the links between structural racism and poor health.”
The trial’s research-backed environmental interventions are greening more than 60 vacant lots, remediating more than a dozen abandoned homes, planting hundreds of trees, and instituting weekly cleanups. On the economic side, each household enrolled in the trial received a one-time $400 cash grant, free financial counseling, and assistance with accessing public benefits. “Take-up [of these benefits] is incomplete because you have to jump through a lot of hoops,” Venkataramani said. “For folks dealing with a variety of stressors, it’s hard to do all that.”
Large-scale federal funding for studies like IGNITE, which aim to dismantle the impacts of racism, are rare. South and Venkataramani hope the trial will demonstrate the effectiveness of environmental and economic interventions in improving health outcomes. “This is the way forward if we’re going to innovate,” Venkataramani said.