Researching structural harms
and
healing centered health equity
We are a community-engaged health equity research lab that investigates:
How systems and institutional processes create harms that become embodied as everyday experience of hardship, bodily suffering, and exposure to death
The relationships between structural harms and drug use/addiction, violence, social exclusion, exposure to toxic social/built environments, and criminalization/punishment in health care and social service settings among marginalized populations, especially people who experience poverty and housing instability
Community-based movements to address harms by those who have been most historically impacted by violence and social exclusion.
The possibilities for healing-centered health equity through community engaged research and implementation science
Wheat-pasted poster in a DC neighborhood advocating for the expansion of harm reduction services in DC. Dr. Lopez studies community responses to the overdose crisis in DC. Photo by Andrea Lopez