In November, voters in the city of Louisville will elect a new mayor and Metro Council. University of Louisville social scientist Lauren Heberle and the Metropolitan Housing Coalition, Louisville’s affordable housing advocacy group, are ready.��

MHC’s 2022 , titled “Toward a Just Future in Uncertain Times,” was released in June. It is the latest annual MHC report written by Heberle, director of the University of Louisville Center for Environmental Policy & Management in the College of Arts & Sciences, along with graduate student researchers.��

Heberle has contributed to the report since 2006 and written it for more than a decade. Kelly Kinahan, a former UofL assistant professor in the Department of Urban and Public Affairs, was co-author since 2017. (Kinahan has since left the university.)��

The report, at 90 pages, is the longest and most comprehensive ever, designed to be the go-to document for newly elected Louisville leaders who need current information on housing. ��

The MHC report is normally published in November, but its schedule was thrown off by the Covid-19 pandemic. That gave MHC and Heberle’s team the chance to “do a real deep dive” before the November election, she said.��

“If you don’t have it documented, it makes it harder to hold folks accountable or keep moving it forward, especially in something as complicated as housing,” Heberle said. ��

The current report will serve as a road map for the new administration. It is jam-packed with tables, charts, maps and graphics used to help MHC and others advocate for housing changes in Louisville. ��

UofL students also contribute mightily to the report, with several taking a lead on data analysis every year. Some are undergraduate students, some are graduate students. Some are sociology majors, while others are from urban and public affairs. ��

This applied research is a “way of teaching them how to make sense and talk about the importance of research for policy change, for social change, for social justice,” Heberle said.��

 “Figuring out how to understand this complicated structure of funding and policy that comes down from the federal government and shapes how Louisville is able to function is a really important learning opportunity for our students,” she added. Students have used their experience working on the report to help them apply for jobs, she said.��

Tony Curtis, executive director of MHC, noted the many years Heberle has worked on the report.��

“Producing this report is not only important to drive the fair, accessible and affordable housing conversation in Louisville and making the best housing data and analysis available for policymakers, advocates, and the community, it is a research and educational tool that Lauren uses to teach her UofL students and give those students the opportunity to engage in research that has real community impact,” Curtis said. “This is the beauty of the State of Metropolitan Housing Report collaboration between MHC, Lauren and her team.”��

There have been some years that the report focused on research topics suggested by Heberle or her students, while other years the report is in response to a specific need or request that MHC has, such as preparing for upcoming legislation.��

“They’ve understood the value of working with students and have seen that work to their benefit over the years,” Heberle said of MHC, “and have been really supportive of our students in that work.”��

As director of the in A&S, Heberle might have two or three graduate students working with her on the MHC report or another project each semester.����

Students bring different interests and talents to the project. “I’ve had folks come to the table saying, ‘I want to learn how to make better maps,’” she said, and they produced maps for the report. Additionally, she and her students often work closely with UofL’s and the .��

Learning how to obtain and report federal census data is a big part of compiling the report. Students learn how to put the information that is available — which fluctuates — into a form that MHC can use for its needs — which also fluctuates. ��

“That’s a learning experience for students,” she said. ��

Heberle also leads community engagement for the created at UofL about five years ago to support research on the cardiometabolic effects of volatile organic chemicals (VOCs). As a social scientist, her focus is community engagement, or working with the public affected by the sites. UofL is one of several universities that conduct research or outreach on the sites .��

The Build Back Better Regional Challenge is designed to assist communities nationwide by accelerating the economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic and building local economies that will be resilient to future economic shocks.

The EDA is calling for a coalition approach, bringing together state and local government, labor and community-based organizations, industry, academia, research institutions, philanthropy and nonprofits. Successful coalitions will build technical assistance and coordination around three-to-eight tightly aligned projects and will receive up to $500,000 for phase 1 concept proposals. They also will be eligible to compete for phase 2 of funding of up to $75 million.

To solicit ideas from the community, Louisville Metro Government and UofL are hosting the public pitch meeting on Tuesday, Aug. 17, from 4 to 6 p.m. at the Main Branch of the Louisville Free Public Library, 301 York St., where attendees will each have five minutes to pitch their ideas. Attendees who wish to pitch a project idea but cannot attend the meeting may submit a concept statement of no more than 50 words to EDABuildBack@louisvilleky.gov by 6 p.m. on the same day.

The best pitches will be asked to submit a one-page, 400-word summary of their proposal, along with a one-page budget summary. Ideas must be responsive to the guidelines specified in the EDA’s Build Back Better Regional Challenge Notice of Funding Opportunity.

Initial applications are due to the EDA on Oct. 19, after which it will award 50 to 60 coalitions up to $500,000 each to draft a more detailed proposal. Those proposals are due on March 15, 2022 and will result in 20 to 30 coalitions receiving grants of between $25 million and $75 million to implement their plans.

UofL has submitted several successful proposals to the EDA over the past few years, including a $750,000 award to launch PRePARE, a new program aimed at solving the long-term health, economic and societal problems resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic.��

“With the Build Back Better Regional Challenge, we hope to build on that track record of success,” said Will Metcalf, UofL’s associate vice president for research development and strategic partnerships. “Together, UofL, the city and our community make strong partners, and this funding would allow us to launch programming that makes an impact.”

The $1 billion Build Back Better Regional Challenge will provide a transformational investment to 20 to 30 regions across the country that want to revitalize their economies. These regions will have the opportunity to grow new regional industry clusters or scale existing ones through planning, infrastructure, innovation and entrepreneurship, workforce development, access to capital and more.

More information about the Build Back Better Regional Challenge and its requirements is .��

The objective is to ensure all children have access to a face mask to help protect them from COVID-19, and to also raise awareness about the importance of wearing a mask.

“Too many times I’ve walked around and it saddens my heart to watch kids with dirty masks, with no masks at times,” .

Joining UofL and Game Changers for the campaign are Louisville Metro Government, Jefferson County Public Schools and the YMCA of Greater Louisville. All 10 YMCA locations have drop-off sites for people to bring clean and unused masks.

YMCA CEO Steve Tarver said the effort is important to help students avoid missing out on social, emotional and academic pursuits during the global pandemic.

“And to think that the lack of a mask could be a barrier for a child to stay safe or get back to school at the appropriate time, that’s unthinkable, and it’s unacceptable,” . “So together, we can eliminate this barrier.”

JCPS Superintendent Marty Pollio added that the Masks for Kids effort is essential to ensure access to masks and, eventually, a return to normalcy.

“The more people wear masks, the quicker we get back into school (and) the quicker we get back to what we call a normal life,” he told the CJ.

Doctors and medical students from UofL donated the first 5,000 masks to JCPS to kick off the campaign, the Courier Journal reports. However, less than 24 hours after the initiative was launched, 132,000 youth-sized disposable masks for JCPS students. The donor is expected to be revealed during a press conference on Monday.

Check out this video from the campaign:

The forum will be held at 6 p.m., Wednesday, Sept. 28, at the Department of Public Health and Wellness, 400 E. Gray St. It will address the possible addition of bans on e-cigarette and hookah use in public places. Louisville enacted its smoke-free ordinance in 2008, prohibiting smoking tobacco products in indoor public places and worksites.

Aruni Bhatnagar, PhD, the and director of the American Heart Association Tobacco Research and Addiction Center (ATRAC) in the School of Medicine, and Robert Jacobs, in the School of Public Health and Information Sciences, will participate in the forum.

Bhatnagar won a grant of $20 million from the NIH and FDA in 2013 to establish the ATRAC. It conducts multidisciplinary research to help inform the manufacture, distribution and marketing of tobacco products as they are regulated by the FDA. In 2014, he chaired a 10-member panel of fellow national experts that developed the American Heart Association’s first-ever policy statement on e-cigarettes, citing the paucity of research that has been conducted on the effects of e-cigarettes on health and the need for continued rigorous research.

Jacobs researches the health effects associated with indoor air and exposures to organic dust in agricultural and industrial environments, inhalation toxicology and international environmental and occupational health practices. He has published research on the health effects associated with specific components of inhaled organic dust and on the development of methods for exposure assessment of specific biological airborne contaminants in both the work and non-work environments.

Also on the panel will be Paul Kiser, PhD, assistant professor at Bellarmine University; Carol Riker, MSN, RN, associate professor emeritus, University of Kentucky; and Monica Mundy, MPH, community adviser, Kentucky Center for Smoke-Free Policy.

More than 500 communities across the country, including 13 in Kentucky, already include e-cigarettes or hookah use in their smoke-free laws. Many local businesses, health care facilities and educational institutions in Louisville also include e-cigarettes or hookah in their own wellness policies.

For additional information, visit the .