Professor Teaches Asset Mapping in Rural Alabama
Moya L. Alfonso, Ph.D., MSPH, gave participatory asset mapping training to the Blackbelt Community Foundation in Camden, Ala., as a part of a community-based participatory research project funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
The training was part of the foundation’s Interdisciplinary Research Leaders Program. Alfonso is the program director of the Ph.D. and DHSc doctoral programs in health science and an associate professor of health science in the Dr. Pallavi Patel College of Health Care Sciences. Her expertise includes community-engaged research, program evaluation, addiction and recovery, and adolescent health.
Alfonso was invited to teach coalition members to use asset mapping, which is the mapping of resources in local communities with the intent of building on the assets to create change. Her workshop was a part of a series to educate coalition members on a variety of topics, including racism, decolonizing nutrition, accessing resources and advocacy. Asset mapping is being used to reframe the narrative around childhood obesity – focusing more on health than body size and weight – and identify the structural causes of health problems. Coalition members learned how to use asset mapping with community members to identify local resources that could contribute to addressing obesity and racism in rural Alabama.
You can read more about the project here: https://irleaders.org/team/centering-the-lived-experience-of-head-start-families-to-investigate-intersections-of-structural-racism-rurality-and-childhood-obesity/.
Posted 02/04/24