The Health Equity Advancement Lab (HEAL) at the Dornsife School of Public Health at Drexel University was founded in 2018 by Dr. Alexis Roth. People and projects affiliated with HEAL use community-engaged research methods to understand how individual and social factors impact drug use, sexual health, and access to health care. We use this information to support the creation, implementation, and dissemination of evidenced-based behavioral and structural interventions that improve the wellbeing of vulnerable and marginalized groups. While based in Philadelphia, the challenges our communities face and the interventions we co-design to address these challenges are applicable in urban environments globally. Priority populations in our current projects involve adolescents, women engaging in survival sex, and persons affected by the opioid crises including persons in active addiction, those in recovery, and lay persons responding to overdose.
Our vision is to promote health equity and amplify the voices of the most marginalized communities in Philadelphia through community-engaged interventions that translate academic research into action.
In our work, this will be done through:
-Training public health students to meet community members where they are at, outside of the class room.
-Respecting the right to self-determination of drug users, sex workers, and other stigmatized populations.
-Promoting harm reducing behaviors, empowerment and agency.
-Working to dismantle systems of oppression and fear-based systems of thought and action.
-Engaging in research that treats vulnerable members of society with dignity and without stigma or judgment.
-Disseminating research findings to community members, stakeholders, and those who have the power to implement evidenced-based policies, programs, and practices.
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