Co-Production of Knowledge for Global Health Equity

What does it mean to “co-produce” knowledge, and why is this important to communities as well as universities? How can co-production lead to better articulation of research questions? How can co-produced knowledge facilitate evidence uptake in programming and policy? How can knowledge jointly produced by communities and university researchers promote health equity?

Throughout this series, we will explore these questions and:

• discover how co-produced knowledge can promote health equity for individuals;
• understand the importance of ethics, rigor, and relevance in the co-production of knowledge;
• learn how to develop and nurture reciprocal partnerships; and
• discuss barriers to engaging in the co-production of knowledge—and how to dismantle them.

Through presentations, “how-to” pointers, and discussions, we will evaluate current thinking about jointly-produced knowledge, and identify best practices for engaging in co-produced scholarship and action.

Attend our seminars and earn a Digital Badge in the Co-Produced Knowledge for Global Health Equity.

A digital badge is a new type of credential that allows you to show specific skills that you have gained through learning experiences. A digital badge is an icon but it is not a static image. It is clickable and houses information such as the issuing institution, the date earned, the criteria required to earn the badge and the evidence that shows that you have met the required criteria. Digital badges are dynamic credentials that YOU own, so you can decide how you want to use them. Once you earn a badge you own it, so you may use it however you wish. Digital badges can be put on social media sites, such as LinkedIn, added as a link on your digital resume, embedded in your e-portfolio and more.

Anyone can complete this not-for-credit digital badge - whether you are a student at UB, a student at another institution, or an external professional. Full requirements and details are listed on our website. 

Seminars will be held from 4-5:30 p.m., Eastern Time, the second Tuesday of the month. 

October 13 
November 10
December 8
January 12
February 9
March 9
April 13
May 11

Charisma Acey, Associate Professor, City and Regional Planning, University of California, Berkeley

Margaretta Lin, Executive Director, Just Cities

Opening remarks by Chitra Rajan, Associate Vice President for Research Advancement, UB Research and Economic Development

Charisma Acey is an associate professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning. Her background includes work, research and travel to countries in West Africa, southern Africa and Central America. Her work focuses on local and regional environmental sustainability, with a focus on poverty reduction, urban governance, environmental justice, and access to basic services. Her work relies on both quantitative and participatory, qualitative research approaches to understanding individual and household demand for improved infrastructure and environmental amenities. Current and past research projects, teaching and service learning courses have focused on addressing barriers to sustainable development such as human-environment interactions at multiple scales in urban areas around the world, poverty and participatory approaches to governance and development, the financing and sustainability of publicly provided services and utilities such as water and sanitation, local and regional food systems, environmental justice, and urbanization domestically and globally.

Margaretta Lin is Executive Director for Just Cities and Ron Dellums Institute for Social Justice, an organization that demands restorative justice in policy, planning, and development. Margaretta combines her unique experiences in government, community activism, law, youth development, social enterprises, and collaboration into a force for equity and hope. She has pioneered innovations and created new community institutions working at the intersections of equitable development, race, class, community healing, government transformation, youth violence, and educational equity.

Fruits of her love and labor include the Oakland Housing Equity Roadmap, the Oakland Housing Assistance Center, the OSNI Collaborative for East Oakland development without displacement, the City of Oakland's foreclosure prevention, foreclosed properties, and vacant lots initiatives, affordable housing in West Oakland and Oakland Chinatown, the preservation of the historic West Oakland train station and community reuse plan, Youth Together, Youth Uprising, and the Skyline High School One Land, One People Youth Center.

David Resnik, Bioethicist, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences

David B. Resnik, has an M.A. and Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and J.D. from Concord University School of Law. He received his B.A. in philosophy from Davidson College. Dr. Resnik was an Associate and Full Professor of Medical Humanities at the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University (ECU) from 1998-2004, and an Associate Director of the Bioethics Center at ECU and University Health Systems from 1998-2004. Dr. Resnik was Assistant and Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wyoming (UW) from 1990-1998, and Director of the Center for the Advancement of Ethics at UW from 1995-1998. Dr. Resnik has published over 250 articles and 9 books on various topics in philosophy and bioethics and is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He serves on several editorial boards and is an Associate Editor of the journal Accountability in Research. Dr. Resnik was Chair of the NIEHS Institutional Review Board (IRB) from 2008-2019 and is a Certified IRB Professional.  

Diane Picard, Executive Director, Massachusetts Avenue Project

Samina Raja, Professor and Associate Dean for Research and Inclusive Excellence, UB School of Architecture and Planning

Diane Picard has been with the Massachusetts Avenue Project since 1997 and currently serves as MAP’s Executive Director. In 2003, she founded Growing Green, a program that employs and trains youth in urban agriculture, food systems issues, microenterprise and leadership. With her very talented staff, she has led MAP’s efforts to increase access of fresh, affordable food in Buffalo’s schools and inner city neighborhoods. In 1992, she received a Masters of Social Work from Boston University, specializing in Program Planning and Community Organizing. Her undergraduate degree from Cornell University prepared her to teach agriculture and art at a rural secondary school in Botswana, where she served as a Peace Corps volunteer from 1986 to 1988.

Samina Raja, professor of urban planning, associate dean for research and inclusive excellence, principal investigator of the Food Systems Planning and Healthy Communities Lab (the “Food Lab”), and co-director of UB's Community for Global Health Equity (CGHE), focuses on understanding the role of planning and policy in building sustainable food systems and healthy communities. In addition to being a leading scholar in her field and active leader in shaping food systems policies for healthier communities in Western New York, Raja is also an invaluable mentor for students. As director of the master of urban planning Community Health and Food Systems specialization, Raja engages her students in the classroom and through graduate studio courses that have worked to develop food systems plans alongside community partners in Buffalo and Trivandrumpuram, India. Through Raja's scholarship and teaching, she emphasizes the necessity for equitable and inclusive planning processes. “It is important that local governments exercise reflection about how policy and planning processes amplify, or dampen, marginalized voices in planning for community food systems.”

Melinda Lemke, Assistant Professor, UB Graduate School of Education

Kate Rogers, Sexual Violence Prevention Coordinator, Crisis Services Buffalo & Erie County

Melinda Lemke is an assistant professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy. An interdisciplinary, qualitative educational policy researcher, her body of work focuses on the politics of education and how public education addresses societal violence and centers the wellbeing of historically underserved students. The first area is concerned with how power and normative values affect educational policy development and implementation toward the end of understanding for whom do these processes work. The second investigates educational actor decision-making and youth schooling experience with the aim of making visible the complex and nuanced ways neoliberal sociopolitical culture shapes both. Situating her work within critical and feminist theoretical traditions, Melinda has examined curriculum policy reform and implementation; gender violence and prevention; human trafficking and immigration policy; researcher positionality; trauma and refugee resettlement; and urban education.  At UB, Melinda is affiliated with the Gender Institute and CGHE Bridging Projects and Global Child teams, and is the Refugee Health and Wellbeing co-Lead.  She also is affiliated with the University of Huddersfield, International Advisory Group for the Ni3 Centre for the Prevention of Gender-based Violence and serves as UB’s Plenary Representative to the University Council for Educational Administration.  Prior to UB, Melinda held a Posdoc at the Hillary Rodham Clinton School of Law, at Swansea University, Wales, UK.  Her current research and teaching are shaped by previous work in sexual assault prevention and survivor advocacy and a career in U.S. urban secondary public education.

Kate Rogers is the Sexual Violence Prevention Coordinator for Crisis Services of Buffalo and Erie County.  She has extensive field experience working with survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence, both foreign born and U.S. citizens.  She currently manages a Rape Prevention Education grant for Crisis Services under the guidance of the New York State Department of Health, implementing evidence-based violence prevention programming in high schools and refugee communities.  Kate also is a PhD student in UB’s School of Public Health and Health Professions Community Health and Health Behavior department.  Her research focuses on teen dating violence, adolescent gender and social norms, sexual education in schools and school policy surrounding sexual and teen dating violence, and intimate partner violence prevention, particularly in immigrant and refugee communities.  Kate holds a Master’s of Public Health from the University at Buffalo and a Bachelor of Arts in English from SUNY Geneseo.

Yeeli Mui, Assistant Professor, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Allison DeHonney, President and CEO, Urban Fruits and Veggies

Yeeli Mui is a trans-disciplinary scholar dedicated to identifying public health solutions that build on community assets and strengths. Her research focus is to advance health equity through the lens of planning for food systems, transportation, and community development. Dr. Mui is leading a team of researchers and practitioners in Kerala, India, through Plan-REFUGE, a multi-country project in the Global South which aims to mitigate food and health inequities among small-scale farmers experiencing urbanization and climate change pressures. In the United States, she is evaluating the role of collective efficacy and collaborative governance models to drive policy and food systems change at the local level. Other ongoing projects include an evaluation of how regional scale plans address food equity; an assessment of food as healing through a therapeutic community gardens program for women and children living in secure residential facilities; and a study of neighborhood revitalization impacts on community health in Baltimore, MD.

Dr. Mui grew up in Bakersfield, CA. She holds a BS in Public Health Sciences and a MPH in Health Policy from Yale University. Dr. Mui also served as a Marketing and Communications Officer for the National Collaborative on Childhood Obesity Research (NCCOR) in Washington, DC, before receiving her PhD in Human Nutrition from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Following her doctoral training, Dr. Mui completed two years as a postdoctoral fellow with the Community for Global Health Equity and School of Architecture and Planning, University at Buffalo, SUNY.

Allison DeHonney has 20 years of professional service in key areas of executive leadership, project management and business development. Ms. DeHonney is Executive Director of Urban Fruits & Veggies LLC (UFV) and a nonprofit Buffalo Go Green Inc. (BGG), an urban agriculture organization which has been in operation since 2014. UFV/BGG has an urban farm and mobile produce market that services food desert areas and underserved communities. BGG provides access to healthy fruits & vegetables and nutrition education. They sell at local farmers markets weekly from June to October, and operate a corporate wellness division where they imbed their services into local companies and universities' corporate wellness programs, and offer programing for elementary and high school students where they teach nutrition education and farming. 

Prior to running these two entities Allison worked as an Account Executive for three companies growing books of businesses and developing, and maintaining client relations and opened and ran an Allstate Insurance Agency & a Collections & Finance Agency. Ms. DeHonney holds a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration and a Master’s degree in Business Management both from Medaille College. She is currently a graduate candidate: Certified Plant Based Chef & Culinary Rx. from Rouxbe Cooking School December 2020. 

Alison Parker, Senior Program Associate, Wilson Center Science and Technology Innovation Program

Alison Parker, PhD serves as a Senior Program Associate with the Science and Technology Innovation Program (STIP) at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. With STIP, Alison evaluates and amplifies innovative and participatory approaches to science and technology, including citizen science and low cost and open hardware. She also serves on the Board of Directors for the Citizen Science Association, including as Chair in 2019-2020, and is a member of the Editorial Board of Citizen Science: Theory and Practice.

Previously, as part of the Innovation Team in the Office of Research and Development at the US Environmental Protection Agency, Alison led initiatives to increase the use of crowdsourcing and citizen science for EPA research and decision-making. She earned her PhD from the University of Toronto Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, where her dissertation evaluated the effectiveness of native pollinators, including through citizen science.

Margaret Gyapong, Professor and Director, Centre for Health Policy and Implementation Research, University of Health and Allied Sciences, Ghana

With a background in Medical Anthropology and Epidemiology, Margaret Gyapong is interested in research impact on health systems. She has worked at the intersection between health research and practice building research capacity nationally and internationally and leading the authorship of 3 modules in the WHO Implementation Research Toolkit. Her research interests are in implementation research, health systems, neglected tropical diseases, malaria, maternal and child health. Margaret serves on a number of national and international task forces, steering committees and working groups. She holds adjunct professorial and senior lecturer positions in Georgetown University and Brunel University and is a reviewer and associate editor for international peer reviewed journals.

Having worked in the Research Division of the Ministry of Health in Ghana from 1990 to 2016, she joined the University of Health and Allied Sciences in Ghana where she is currently the Director of the Institute for Health Research. In 2017, Dr. Gyapong was one of 12 women Honored by women in global health to receive the first ever heroines of health award for her work in drawing attention to the needs of women suffering from the consequences of neglected tropical disease. She is a member of the HCE Advisory Committee.

Sameer Honwad, Assistant Professor, UB Graduate School of Education

Shakuntala Devi Gopal, PhD Student, UB Graduate School of Education

Dr. Sameer Honwad's research focuses on how people learn about environmental sustainability using technology and collaborative learning approaches. His recent research focuses on how learners in different cultures around the world understand ecosystem processes and how do they use this knowledge in their everyday life practices. He works with various communities in the Himalayas (India. Nepal and Bhutan) and with Native American communities in the Pacific Northwest. He has presented and published his work in several national and international venues and has taught at Penn State University, Rutgers University, New York University and also at the Royal Thimpu College in Bhutan. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Learning Sciences in the Department of Learning and Instruction at SUNY, Buffalo.

Shakuntala Devi Gopal is a third year PhD student in the Curriculum, Instruction, and Science of Learning program. Her dissertation research focuses on the role of STEM classroom teachers in framing socio-scientific issues that affect the community. Her other research interests revolve around culturally relevant and responsive learning and teaching practices. She has a Bachelors of Science in Environmental Science and a Masters of Research in Conservation Biology. She was formerly a museum educator at the New York Hall of Science for several years before transitioning to a high school science teacher in Micronesia and then to her doctoral degree at SUNY Buffalo. She currently works with Dr. Sameer Honwad on various projects that leverage storytelling as a pedagogical approach to teaching science in a way that weaves in issues of community, equity, and culture.

Charisma Acey, Associate Professor, City and Regional Planning, University of California, Berkeley

Allison DeHonney, President and CEO, Urban Fruits and Veggies

Shakuntala Devi Gopal, PhD Student, UB Graduate School of Education

Sameer Honwad, Assistant Professor, UB Graduate School of Education

Melinda Lemke, Assistant Professor, UB Graduate School of Education

Margaretta Lin, Executive Director, Just Cities

Yeeli Mui, Assistant Professor, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Diane Picard, Executive Director, Massachusetts Avenue Project

David Resnik, Bioethicist, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences

Kate Rogers, Sexual Violence Prevention Coordinator, Crisis Services Buffalo & Erie County

Join the series speakers Charisma Acey, Allison DeHonney, Melinda Lemke, Margaretta Lin, Yeeli Mui, Diane Picard, David Resnik and Kate Rogers reflect on what it means to co-produce knowledge. In an informal panel discussion, participants will reflect on how co-produced knowledge is important to both communities and universities, how co-produced knowledge can lead to better, more pertinent research questions, how better to develop partnerships with community members, and what barriers exist in this work, as well as how to dismantle them. Panelists will also discuss how to sustain and exit partnerships, as well as answer questions from the audience.

For inquiries and questions, please contact us at: globalhealth@buffalo.edu.