Mission
Social Health Concepts and Practice (SHCP) is an independent consulting organization offering the opportunity for individuals, communities, organizations, and institutions to identify and understand the bridge between the health of the individual and society. In partnership with communities and engaging in action research and practice since 2006 SHCP facilitates alternative ways to transform existing oppressive and hierarchical models of individual and community change. Our understanding stems from the premise that the norms of society shape our mental, physical, and spiritual health and sets the framework for resultant disparities between those with power and those without-in all aspects of life. In turn, our individual selves can either continue to take on these norms in each generation, or transform ourselves to re-construct these existing social norms. Rebuilding healthy selves and communities can occur only when we transform oppressive norms- embedded in our selves and institutions- which maintain the cycle of segregation and inequality. Our collective transformed selves become the transformed society-moving toward a new norm of balance, equity, and sustainability.
Practices
Social Health Concepts & Practices is located in East Baltimore. Its members engage in community listening sessions-through door-to-door engagement- aimed at understanding the needs of the community. Information gathered from these listening sessions are summarized without names or addresses and provided back to residents so everyone knows what others in the neighborhood are thinking about different issues- to help build stronger social networks. The information is also provided to local community organizations, appropriate city departments, city council representatives, and to the larger public to better understand the needs of members of the community. We feel that community members are the key informants of what is happening in their communities and therefore should be listened to and participate in decision-making to assure that programs implemented address their needs.
Join the community of change
Social Health Concepts & Practices seeks out local community members to apprentice and learn methods of community organizing, information gathering, analysis, reporting, policy development. It offers a people-to-policy path of social and economic change. Members gain an opportunity to learn skills that will help them in all types of education and employment including: health, civil society, sociology, law, housing, transportation, criminal justice, recreation, spirituality.
Skills and Expertise
Coalition building and communication
Facilitation/Teaching
Fundraising, budgetary and financial management
Community organizing, building, engagement and advocacy
Leadership Development
Management and supervision
Organizational building
Policy development and analysis
Program development, implementation, and evaluation
Research to action: community building, community development, community organizing, community participation as a health determinant, criminal justice and health disparities, displacement and dispossession: health impacts, housing and health, immigrant health, mental heath, mindfulness-based practices in health, mindfulness-based practices in community change, occupational health, power, decision-making and health, public health policy and justice, social capital, social determinants of health, social justice and medicine, social policy and health, substance abuse, urban health
Community Partners and Priorities
Supporting the planning and process of VOLAR (Village of Love and Resistance) is a major undertaking of Social Health Concepts and Practice. VOLAR’s mission is to co-create a cooperative community in East Baltimore owned by Black and Brown people to create opportunities for historical residents to acquire, rehab, and sell/rent property to build wealth.
Context:
There is unprecedented redevelopment occurring in Baltimore, specifically in the neighborhoods in East Baltimore. This development has ushered in economic revitalization and prosperity for some yet displacement for historic low income Black residents. These are the systemic conditions that give rise to racial, social, and health inequity and environmental injustice. With ethical planning to assure that ‘development as usual’ does not occur, East Baltimore can rebuild itself to assure economic, social and health equity for historic and new residents.
Strategy:
- Rehabbing a building to accommodate 6-8 residential micro units housing folks involved in justice work based in a love ethic, office and art space for social entrepreneurs from the local community, affordable event space, commercial kitchen, wellness center.
- Hosting educational workshops of radical organizing rooted in justice and love.
- Organizing local residents to become small-term investors of redevelopment and gain wealth: groups of 10-25 people acquiring, rehabbing, and selling/renting one to many properties.
Past Project Documents
Gomez, MB, Linton S, Adjani-Aldrin C. Perspectives and experiences of gentrification: “This was never about us.” Submitted.
Gomez, MB, Johns Hopkins University and the history of urban rebuilding in Baltimore. In: Baltimore Revisited: New Social History for the 21st Century American City. Eds. King, N, Drabinski K. In press. Rutgers University Press.
Gomez MB, 2017. Neoliberalization’s propagation of health inequity in urban rebuilding processes: The dependence on context and path. International J Health Services. 47:655-689. http://doi.org/10.1177/0020731417712393
Gomez M, 2018. Love in Action with the Police. Mindfulness Bell. Summer. https://wkup.org/love-in-action-with-police/
Fakunle DO, Smiley, CJ, Gomez MB, 2018. “The Black President and the Black Body: The Intersection of Race, Class, Gender, and Violence in America”. In: How the Obama presidency changed the political landscape. Eds. Walker L, Brooks FE, Goings RB. ABC-CLIO, California.
Brown L, Larson SE, Bachelder A, Gomez MB, 2017. Sheryl A, Bryan I. The Rise of Anchor Institutions and the Threat to Community Health: Protecting Community Wealth, Building Community Power. Kalfou: J Ethnic & Relational Studies. 3(1) DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.15367/kf.v3i1.88
Policing, community fragmentation, and public health: Baltimore city. Social Health Concepts and Practices, Inc.
Policing, community fragmentation, and public health: Observations from Baltimore in Baltimore. J Urban Health () 1-14. DOI 10.1007/s11524-015-0022-9
YOUNG, GIFTED, AND @ RISK: Symposium on High Achieving Students of Color and Mental Health. Final report. Brown University, Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America and Stephen C. Rose Legacy Fund.
Neoliberal strategies’ propagation of health inequality of urban populations in rebuilding processes: How do we change them? American Public Health Association.
The power to corrupt scholarship and propagate inequity: corporatization of the academy. Transnational Institute.
Spirit in our struggles for truth, peace, and justice. Mindfulness Bell.
Application of space-time scan statistics to describe geographic and temporal clustering of visible drug activity in Baltimore, Maryland, 2000-2010. J Urban Health. 91:940
Equitable and Sustainable Redevelopment: A Path Forward. Final Report www.mariselabgomez.com
Race, class, power, and organizing in East Baltimore. Rebuilding abandoned communities in America. Lexington Books.
The solidity toolbox. In: Stay solid: A radical handbook for youth. Ed. Hern M. AK Press.
Mental and behavioral health programs for insured racial and ethnic minorities: what works. Consensus paper: Morgan State University, AETNA, Inc., National Center for Behavioral Health Change.
Managing depression in primary care. In: Current diagnosis and treatment in Family Medicine. 3rd Edition. Eds. South-Paul JE, Matheny SC, Lewis EL. McGraw-Hill, New York.
Addictive disorders. In: Disparities in Psychiatric Care. Eds. Ruiz P. Primm AB. Lippincott, Williams and Wilkins. Wolters Kluver Health.
Managing depression in primary care. In: Current diagnosis and treatment in Family Medicine. 2nd Edition. Eds. South-Paul JE, Matheny SC, Lewis EL. McGraw-Hill, New York.
Bridging the Gap: Depression and chronic diseases from an ethnic and cultural perspective. Update. Health Disparities Solution, Baltimore MD.
Community organizing during eminent domain-driven redevelopment can change outcomes: East Baltimore, Maryland. Shelter Force Magazine
Anti-Egalitarianism, Legitimizing Myths, Racism, and “Neo-McCarthyism” in Social Epidemiology and Public Health: A Review of Sally Satel’s PC, MD. In: Political and Economic Determinants of Population Health and Well-Being: Controversies and Developments Eds. Navarro V, Muntaner C. Baywood Publishing Company, Inc.
Cultural competence, mental health treatment, and the criminal justice system. Community Ment Health J 41:557-69
The Impact of Mental Health on Chronic Disease. In: The State of Black America 2005. Ed. LA. Daniels. National Urban League.
Urban redevelopment and health in East Baltimore, Maryland: the role of social capital. Critical Public Health. 15:83
Prevention Practices in Juvenile Justice systems: merging public health and criminal justice systems. National Center for Health Behavioral Change
Depression in Afro-descendent women in the U.S: The role of health determinants in planning prevention. National Center for Health Behavioral Change
Qualitative and quantitative research in social epidemiology: is complementarity the issue? Gazeta Sanitaria. 17 (Supl 1):33-132
Classist, racist, and sexist ideology in US Public Health: a review/essay of Sally Satel’s P.C., M.D.: How political correctness is corrupting medicine. J International Health Services. 32:1-17.
Chronically mentally ill patients with and without substance use disorders: a pilot study. Psychiatry Res. 95:261-70.
A description of precipitants of drug use among dually diagnosed patients with chronic mental illness. Com Mental Health J; 36:351-362
Severely mentally ill patients with and without substance use disorders: characteristics associated with treatment attrition. Com Mental Health J; 36:235-246
Two types of treatment programs for dually diagnosed patients; mental health vs. substance abuse treat; J Subst Abuse Treat
Lead Consultant
Marisela B Gomez MS PHD MD MPH
Contact: [email protected] to learn about conceptualizing and practicing social health: a transformative and revolutionary way of engaging in all work on the path of rebuilding healthy and sustainable communities.