Transit Equity & Environmental Health in Baltimore

The Department of Geography & Environmental Systems cordially invites you to join us for our Virtual Seminar on Wednesday, November 3rd at Noon ET.

Dr. Megan Latshaw
Department of Environmental Health & Engineering
The Johns Hopkins University

Samuel Jordan
President, Baltimore Transit Equity Coalition

Public transit provides relatively low-cost access to jobs, food, healthcare and increased physical activity. Public transit also reduces pollution and greenhouse gas emissions by taking cars off the roads. Dr. Latshaw, along with Samuel Jordan of the Baltimore Transit Equity Coalition and several other experts did the first ever transit equity analysis for Baltimore City. Looking at transit, social vulnerability, air pollution & health effects, they identified 45 neighborhoods as opportunities for investment in transit infrastructure.

Megan Latshaw is the Director of Master’s Degree Programs in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. She also serves as co-chair of University’s Sustainability Plan Steering Committee, and as core faculty for the Environmental Challenges Focus Area of the Bloomberg American Health Initiative. As faculty at Hopkins, her efforts focus on designing healthy communities, connecting environmental health research with the real world, and improving environmental health surveillance (all through a justice and equity lens).

Samuel Jordan founded the Baltimore Transit Equity Coalition (BTEC) in 2016 to complete the Baltimore Red Line light rail project and recover its transformative economic benefits for the Baltimore metropolitan region and the African American, Hispanic, low-income, and transit-dependent communities adversely affected by the cancellation of the project in 2015. He has conducted community livability, issue organizing, and skills training programs in Baltimore and Washington, DC over the last twelve years. As an advisor to the Washington, DC Department of Transportation, Mr. Jordan was honored by the National Capital Chapter of the American Planning Association in 2013 for his community livability tool, “Community Livability Outreach Advisors.” Mr. Jordan is a former Chair of the DC Statehood Party; former Executive Director of Health Care Now! Washington, DC; former Director of the Program to Abolish the Death Penalty at Amnesty International USA; former Director of Organizing for AFSCME District 20 and Representative of AFSCME Local 2093 in Washington, DC; former Executive Director of the National Education Association DC Office; and former Organizer of the US-Kurdish Solidarity Initiative.  Mr. Jordan holds a Juris Doctorate from the Georgetown University Law Center