Our neighborhoods are so much more than just the location of the buildings we live in. Each neighborhood offers something beautiful, inspiring, and entirely unique.
However, where we live plays a big role in how long we live, and the longest-lived and shortest-lived neighborhoods are separated by nearly 20 years in average life expectancy.
The video below explains Somos Neighbors, a new tool to connect us with each other to better understand the neighborhoods we live in and how we can close the life-expectancy gap.
Watch the video to see a presentation by Tonika Johnson, founder of the Folded Map Project in Chicago a multimedia exhibit that connects residents who live at corresponding addresses on the North and South Sides of Chicago. The project helps them bridge the gap between them of of life expectancy and segregation.
About the Somos Neighbors Project
In partnership with the Urban Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Somos Neighbors is one of 10 projects nationwide selected through the Visualizing and Powering Healthy Lives opportunity to use USALEEP local life expectancy data to explore and address neighborhood-level life expectancy disparities.
The 10 projects are intended as case studies for other communities interested in using the USALEEP data to understand and address place-based inequities in life expectancy.
To learn more about the 9 other projects selected for Visualizing and Powering Healthy Lives, please visit www.puttinglocaldatatowork.org
About CI:Now
Community Information Now (CI:Now) is a nonprofit organization called a local data intermediary. Our vision is improved lives and decreased disparities through democratized data.
Founded more than 20 years ago, CI:Now provides data, analysis, training, and tools to help Texas communities make decisions that are informed by good data. As part of a community-academic partnership begun in 2008, CI:Now’s core data team is housed at the UTHealth Houston School of Public Health in San Antonio. We’ve been a member of the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership (NNIP) since 2010.