In Chicago, there are 77 community areas ranked by their social vulnerability index, a tool that helps explain how underlying health disparities can make some Latino neighborhoods more vulnerable in the face of environmental or man-made disasters. Reporter Francesca Mathews spends time in the southwest side speaking with residents and advocates, like organizers from the Chicago Environmental Justice Network and the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization, about the health impacts of past disaster on the local communities, and what government officials can do to help them be more resilient.
100 Latina Birthdays is an original production of LWC Studios. It's made possible by grants from Healthy Communities Foundation, Kellogg Foundation, Woods Fund Chicago, the Field Foundation of Illinois, Pritzker Foundation, and the Chicago Foundation for Women. Mujeres Latinas en Acción is a series fiscal sponsor.
Mathewes: In Chicago, there are 77 areas ranked by their social vulnerability index. Many of them are predominantly Latino neighborhoods.
Flor Dominguez: Growing up, we always lived in either Brighton Park. And then we moved to Gage Park and stayed here.
Mathewes: That’s Flor Dominguez. She’s 26 and used to be a volunteer at the Gage Park Latinx Council, GPLXC, a queer-led organization that runs two community centers in the neighborhood.
Dominguez: My parents work at a factory. My dad's a janitor. So I feel like growing up I wasn't really aware of, like, all the hard.... So like my parents didn't show me that they were in debt, my parents didn't show me that we didn't have money for gas or things like that.
Mathewes: Flor’s experience touches on the broad concepts of SVI. It highlights the way the SVI can help us understand how underlying health disparities can create compounding levels of vulnerability in a community. Especially amidst a disaster.
The Social Vulnerability Index is a tool that can help officials, planners, and first responders determine what kind, and how much support a community might need in response to a disaster, like a pandemic or an extreme weather event. The higher the score on the SVI, the greater an area’s social vulnerability.
Dominguez: I never even knew that, Gage Park was a place where people don't even have that many resources, I guess. I guess until I grew up now,...
Mathewes: To determine a location’s social vulnerability index, four broad categories are examined: socioeconomic status, household characteristics, racial and ethnic minority status, and housing type and transportation.
Nationally, socially vulnerable populations are disproportionately impacted by natural disasters and environmental events related to climate change. One report by Headwaters Economics and the Hispanic Access Foundation indicates that Latinos in the U-S face higher flood risks than other groups. And Latinos are often left out of disaster planning due to language barriers and might struggle more to recover after a disaster.
Dominguez: It's just really hard because I feel like people in Gage Park are, they're in the middle. I don't think there are like a ton of people that are like super poor or super rich. It's like in the middle, so you can't always get like Medicaid. You can't always get the food stamps. And then you're like, well, why not? I should qualify, but I'm not qualifying because I need to work all these hours to pay for my rent or something.
Mathewes: Gage Park is over 90 percent Latino––mostly Mexican American. It has the second-highest social vulnerability of all predominantly Latino neighborhoods in Chicago. It’s second only to Chicago Lawn, which is 58 percent Latino.
The Chicago Health Atlas also indicates that several Latino communities like Gage Park have lower high school graduation rates, crowded housing circumstances, uninsured rates, and limited English proficiency –– all of which are among the 16 individual factors used in the SVI calculation.
Dominguez: I would find myself driving up north to get to therapy and all this stuff, and it kind of would upset me and like make me angry. It's like, you need places where people can go for free. You need places where people feel like they're welcomed, you know, instead of like yeah, there's a store, but I can't even go there. I can't afford it. Why would they put a store right there when they can put a center or something? Or where can I take my kids to? I can't take them to the park all the time. It's gonna get dangerous. So just feel like all of that would help so much.
Mathewes: Driving up to Chicago’s North Side, Flor saw a different reality.
North Center and Lincoln Park—two predominantly white neighborhoods—have some of the lowest social vulnerability in the city, according to the Chicago Health Atlas. These neighborhoods also have fewer non-citizens, higher high school graduation rates, and higher English proficiency.
Flor says her parents gave her a stable life and that she did not struggle like others in the neighborhood did. But she saw the SVI disparities as a volunteer at GPLXC.
Dominguez: A lot of people speak Spanish like they actually really don't speak English at all. And so it's hard for them to get jobs like we've been hearing a lot like, ‘Oh, help us apply for jobs,’ or ‘Help us, you know, with these documents.’
Mathewes: Overcrowded housing, another factor in the SVI, is something Flor sees frequently.
Dominguez: There's a lot of like, big families here too, I think. And I think that's another thing. It's like, there's so many people living in a house, so overpopulated. And I think that's also hard, you know.
Mathewes: What Flor has experienced and observed in the neighborhood speaks to the very purpose of having a measurement like the SVI—it translates dynamic factors of health and well-being into a simplified number. SVI rankings range from the 0 percentile—or the least socially vulnerable—to the 100th, or the most socially vulnerable. Gage Park has a score of 89.9.
Mathewes: Andy Dent is the program director for the Geospatial Research, Analysis, and Services Program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Andy Dent: We explore the relationship between place and health. And we use technology, we use data, we use geospatial statistics, we use visualization, we use all those things to understand how that connection works and the different dynamics at play there.
Mathewes: His team helps public health professionals better understand the relationship between place and health.
Dent: We're highly collaborative because everybody across the CDC, no matter what area they work in, they need to think about how place affects health. It is something that is meaningful and relevant across the board.
Mathewes: SVI can be used as a “broad brush,” as Andy puts it. It can also be broken down into individual factors to see which communities are more socially vulnerable and what needs set them apart from one another.
Dent: Releasing and managing the SVI at the census tract level enables us to do things to help the communities that face unique challenges. We see this across the United States, but it might be that one community that borders another community, maybe they're separated by, like, a rail line or maybe an interstate, maybe some other geographic feature. They differ extensively. So we can't bundle those together. We have to address those communities as the unique communities that they are.
Mathewes: The pandemic is a good example of how individual factors, such as being in a single-parent household, having a disabled person at home or not having health insurance, together can shape how a catastrophic event impacts a community.
COVID hit Latino neighborhoods hard. Here’s a news story from November 2020.
WGN News: Five Chicago area zip codes in Latino neighborhoods have seen the most confirmed cases in the entire state.
Mathewes: Among those five zip codes was the 60629 zip code, which encompasses parts of both Gage Park and Chicago Lawn. According to the city health database, in one week in November 2020, the death rate in 60629 was 9.8%. The citywide rate was 3.6%. Nationally; throughout the pandemic, Latinos were more likely to die from COVID-19 than whites when adjusted for age, according to Kaiser Family Foundation.
The pandemic’s disproportionate impact on Latinos is related to a number of underlying socioeconomic and health factors, including the fact that Latinos are overrepresented in “essential” jobs and less able to safely social distance at home compared to white workers.
Dominguez: I go through a lot of mental health things, I think that's when I realized that we really don't have any health care here.
Mathewes: Gage Park and Chicago Lawn also have some of the highest numbers of uninsured non-citizens, according to the Chicago Health Atlas. Latinos are also more likely to have comorbidities associated with Covid mortality risk, like obesity, diabetes, and hypertension.
There were 365 deaths in the 60629 zip code between March 1, 2020, and May 18, 2024, according to Chicago's COVID-19 database archives. By contrast, the 60618 zip code, which includes North Center—the second least socially vulnerable community in the city—saw 184. For the week in November that Gage Park’s death rate hit 10%, North Center’s was 3%, even lower than the city average.
The CDC used SVI during the pandemic to help determine which areas across the nation most needed mobile testing sites. That’s the type of “broad brush” usage that Andy described.
SVI can also parse out meaningful differences between communities that might look similar at first glance.
Hermosa is another predominantly Latino neighborhood that was hit hard by the pandemic. The 60639 zip code—which includes Hermosa and the neighboring Belmont Cragin—was also one of the five zip codes with the highest number of cases in October 2020.
Mathewes: However, during one week in November 2020, when Gage Park’s zip code had about a 10% death rate, Hermosa’s was just above 6%.
Dent: Every community struggles with something that's a little bit different, right? One community might struggle with English, another community might struggle with poverty, and another community might struggle with lack of vehicle access.
Mathewes: While those numbers can’t be attributed to a single factor, Hermosa is ranked 27th on the list of SVI rankings—as opposed to Gage Park at ranking number 2. Looking more closely at the neighborhoods using SVI indicators, we’re able to see that Hermosa has fewer uninsured non-citizens. This attests to something else Andy says is important in using SVI as a tool—its value as a broad brush approach, but also its potential for parceling out more detailed information about a community.
Dent: The SVI will allow a user of the SVI to dig pretty deep to figure out which communities are struggling in what way.
Mathewes: This becomes particularly relevant because of the diversity within Latinos. Chicago’s Latino or Hispanic-identifying population is made up of numerous generations, nationalities, and income levels—all of which are important factors to be aware of when figuring out how to best equip communities to recover from something like a pandemic.
Dent: In some instances, a community that does confront a lack of English proficiency, for example, their SVI score might look okay. It might be okay. It might look middling, for example. But if a city government or another public health organization, for example, wants to really dig into what communities are like having a lack of English proficiency because they need to be dealt with and assisted in a particular way, that can be teased out of the SVI.
Mathewes: In April 2020, a developer demolished a smokestack at the former Crawford Coal plant in Little Village, a predominantly Latino neighborhood on the Southwest Side. Little Village, also known as La Villita, has been a historical hub of Mexican-American life in Chicago. The demolition, carried out by Hilco Redevelopment Partners, created a massive cloud of dust that engulfed the neighborhood. Residents received little notice prior to the demolition.
NEWS CLIP: Demolition in the little village community sends a plume of dust into the Chicago neighborhood. It happened at a time when residents were already concerned about COVID-19.
Mathewes: Edith Tovar, a lifelong La Villita resident and an organizer at LVEJO, the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization, was there.
Edith Tovar: Yeah, one of the first things that we learned from just talking to neighbors, right, is that you know, they had a lot of hard time cleaning in the aftermath, right? There was like a lot of dust that made its way into the home. A lot of folks were already having a difficult time with their respiratory conditions on top of the pandemic on top of, you know, not being able to afford their medicine, right? And so there was just like so many added layers and burdens to even just like the implosion and like the aftermath, right? That kind of added like a snowball effect.
Mathewes: After the demolition, LVEJO team members were some of the first to respond on the scene. They organized mutual aid efforts, like bottled water and mask distributions.
Edith Tovar: I think in less than 24 hours, we found out that a neighbor or a resident passed away from respiratory conditions. His name was Señor Fernando Cantu. And so we know that resident and their family, right?
Mathewes: Fernando Cantú was 78 years old and passed away shortly after the demolition. Organizers later told the Chicago Sun-Times that Cantú suffered from asthma COPD—a chronic inflammatory lung disease—and that the particulate matter from the demolition may have aggravated his respiratory issues and hastened his death, according to the newspaper.
Years down the line, Edith says people are still feeling the effects of the demolition.
Edith Tovar: In conversations, we know that folks have been bothered by dust in their eyes, right? They have, like, now some sort of like eye conditions, or that now, a family who didn't have any respiratory issues now they have asthma or they have, you know, other forms of complications.
Mathewes: The SVI can not only be used to help public health officials plan before a disaster but can also help tailor the response to the aftermath.
Little Village is part of the eleventh-most socially vulnerable neighborhood in Chicago, which raises the question: would the aftermath of the implosion have been the same in a less vulnerable zip code?
Earlier this year, there was a $12 million settlement over the botched demolition. LVEJO helped people fill out claims forms for the settlement but said there was very little transparency in the process.
Edith Tovar: We supported the class action settlement attorneys through the technical support day. It was earlier this year and in supporting them and, like, filling out the documents, right, one of the questions that I know like a lot of us were like, you know, were you impacted further than just like property, right? Because there was a question of a claim for property and a claim for, like, personal injury. And that led to people sharing their stories, right? Or how much they unfortunately have to go to the doctor, Because again, either they've developed serious skin conditions, cancer, unfortunately.
Mathewes: More than 20,000 Little Village residents are expected to receive payouts of between $200 and $400. Edith says that the settlement didn’t do nearly enough to address the long-term environmental issues or the impacts on residents’ health.
Edith Tovar: There was a final decision back in April, late April, and yeah, they got like a $317 settlement check per claim. While it’s obviously not going to address the long-term impacts that folks had based on the implosion, it also doesn't even bring any type of accountability or transparency to what actually happened, right?
Mathewes: Hilco was fined $68,000 by the city of Chicago in 2020. According to a watchdog report leaked to local news organizations in 2023, the city could have prevented the toxic dust cloud if it had required the firms running the demolition to get specific permits to use explosives. The full 94-page report has since been made available to the public.
The same report found that city health officials were warned over 200 days before the demolition that the dust from such an explosion could be “cataclysmic” And advocates say the city has done little to address the negligence and lack of transparency and oversight that led to the botched demolition.
Edith Tovar: We've been collecting data. I know one of the cool things about collaborating with the Chicago Environmental Justice Network is that there's a lot of air monitors now popping up in Purple Air, that’s the air monitoring network that we use.
Mathewes: The city has implemented new regulations for explosive demolitions and made some information and reports available to the public. But organizers at LVEJO say the inaction and lack of accountability from the local government is part of what drives their work.
Organizers have collaborated with other environmental justice groups in Chicago to monitor air quality in neighborhoods through a program called Purple Air. They’ve taken it upon themselves to inform residents about the risks to their respiratory health.
Edith Tovar: And so it's good to see that folks are really taking into account the air quality; folks are understanding.
Mathewes: LVEJO offered free community health workshops in collaboration with other local organizations, Telpochcalli Community Education Project and Enlace.
Edith Tovar: And it's mostly, like, volunteers or like parents from local schools or institutions. And so we have really good connections with like a few of them and sharing just like, general information, right? Because this was also during COVID-19. And so a lot of the precautions or protocols that were being adapted through COVID-19 was also helping. Make sure that you wipe down everything or you clean things. And so a lot of those, we were able to overlap as far as skill sharing.
Mathewes: There is now a Target distribution center on the site of the former coal plant. Residents say the number of trucks serving the warehouse contributes to poor air quality in the neighborhood. According to the EPA, the neighborhood still sees levels above the 90th percentile in the country for particulate diesel matter pollution. But Edith says that Little Village residents are now more aware of pollution issues in their neighborhood.
Edith Tovar: I don't wanna say awake, but awake, right? And really noticing the type of air that they're breathing and like really care. And are getting more activated and wanting to know the type of air quality, trying to understand why their air quality isn't as good as the one, further in a different zip code, and understanding also what is in their surroundings. And I think for us is understanding our industrial corridor and how do those, you know, neighbors impact, you know, the rest of us that live in the area.
Mathewes: While hard to imagine, the situation in Little Village could have been even worse.
Based on SVI alone, Little Village isn’t as vulnerable as some other communities in Chicago. And, as natural disasters become more frequent and severe as a result of climate change, understanding the complexities and disparities at play from zip code to zip code could prove essential in making sure that communities are adequately prepared for emergencies and supported in the aftermath.
Mathewes: Closing the social vulnerability gap between communities isn’t just about disaster response.
Mariah Moreno-Mata is a policy fellow at the Chicago Environmental Justice Network. She currently resides in Pilsen, adjacent to Little Village. She spent the early part of her youth in Little Village before moving to Garfield Ridge, a neighborhood closer to the city’s Southwest limit.
Mathewes: Mariah grew up noticing the differences between neighborhoods in Chicago as she moved around. She had family in Little Village at the time of the Crawford Plant disaster in 2020.
Mariah Moreno-Mata I grew up with my grandma all the time. And then, even as we moved to Garfield Ridge, my grandma would always watch us after school. And so having that commute, even from Little Village to Garfield Ridge, there was always a lot of industry that was just around in the neighborhood. And I really didn't realize that that was uncommon until I started going to high school.
Mathewes: Mariah attended Walter Payton, a selective-enrollment public high school in Old Town—a notably whiter and wealthier neighborhood on the North Side.
Moreno-Mata And so I just thought it was normal to live by these facilities. I really didn't think much of it until I realized that other communities weren't surrounded by this, and they were actually green spaces. And then I guess one of the other things that I didn't realize was as common was just the integration of large vehicles within communities and sort of being able to, like, I don't know, walking down 26th street, like, getting my like after school snack. And then there's like massive trucks that are just going down the street.
Mathewes: For Mariah, who studied environmental law at the Chicago-Kent College of Law, there are potential changes to planning and policy that could transform the relationship between place and health in communities like Little Village.
Moreno-Mata But I think a policy that would be really helpful is just sort of recreate this idea of, like, zoning and like, how much a community can withstand as far as industry within that community. And so, like, whether that be sort of an understanding of a community is already overburdened with a particular sort of industry, creating policy that will truly consider what cumulative impacts means.
Mathewes: The City of Chicago conducted something called a “cumulative impacts assessment” aimed at identifying areas that experience more environmental stressors and social vulnerability. The city released a report in 2023 indicating that much of the Southwest Side does, indeed, experience a higher environmental burden than other areas of the city.
And in March of 2023, The Guardian newspaper reported that Chicago’s Southwest Side was the third worst place to live in the United States for air pollution.
That burden translates into the potential for real human loss.
Moreno-Mata A lot of my family members on my mom's side remained in Little Village for years, and they grew up in Little Village, and so a lot of my aunts and uncles…Well, there's 11 of them on my mom's side. But several of them ended up passing away from cancer. And a lot of what my family truly believes is just the impacts of living in the neighborhood had a role in that as far as one, they care about the quality of air that they were exposed to. Just the proximity to different industries and just not realizing that very much could have played a role.
Mathewes: The report talked specifically about truck pollution as harmful to communities on the Southwest Side. Notably, housing type and transportation are part of the four broad categories used to determine SVI. In this report, the city makes a commitment to implement recommendations made by another study, called the Southwest Industrial Corridor Transportation Study, to cut down on traffic from trucks going to and from industrial sites throughout the city’s Southwest Side.
In collaboration with the Center for Neighborhood Technology, Little Village organizers created their own monitoring system to track the number of trucks coming through their neighborhood.
During one 24-hour period in April 2023, over 3,800 industrial trucks and buses passed through a corridor of Little Village. In the same period, only 2,083 trucks and buses passed through Lincoln Park, a predominantly white neighborhood.
Mathewes: WBEZ Chicago reported on the Southwest Side’s truck pollution in April. They spoke to activists from the Center for Neighborhood Technology for the story.
Here’s a clip from their reporting:
Juanpablo Ramirez-Franc:
Paulina Vaca stands at the corner of Pulaski Road and 41st Street, one of Chicago’s busiest intersections for truck traffic….1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, just off the top of my field of vision…
Mathewes: While the report looks at the cumulative impact of industries on communities, Mariah says that more emphasis needs to be placed on regulating the permit process that allows new industries to set up shop in Little Village and the surrounding areas.
Moreno-Mata How do we take that all into consideration and be more stringent as far as who we are giving permits out to? And also like, how do we also maintain permits, that there's just accountability that there aren't bad actors? And I think generally, like, even during the permitting process, there are folks or industries that are operating on expired permits.
Mathewes: She notes that there’s an easy way to ensure that regulators maintain vigilant oversight.
Moreno-Mata If the issue is that they don't have the capacity to maintain everything, then they're just not giving it as many permits. And that's sort of an easy, in my mind, solution that can be done generally. And I think there's always sort of this argument that industry provides jobs for folks, but, to what cost? And also, we want quality jobs.
I think that was sort of a big thing, even within Little Village was, like, Target moved in, and has a huge warehouse, but also recognizing folks in the neighborhood deserve better, higher paying jobs as well. We're not only good for warehouse jobs.
Mathewes: This fight, as Mariah describes it, goes beyond a demand for less trucking or tighter regulations. It’s a fight to be valued the same way as other communities and given the same opportunities to live and work in a healthy environment.
Moreno-Mata I feel like a lot of time folks are wanting to, like, make it this complex issue. And I think what it boils down to is the fact that, you know, people's lives are truly affected on a day-to-day basis. And who is there to protect us if we've exhausted all of the measures around us? And so, yeah, I just feel like, I just find it mind-boggling sometimes, the arguments as far as ‘Oh, well, it provides jobs or it helps the economy.’ But, like, the economy to what extent? Because most folks don't necessarily feel that change right away. Or if at all.
Mathewes: This whole conversation—social vulnerability, environmental stressors, and their cumulative impact on communities—has specific and dire implications for women.
According to the United Nations, women and children globally are 14 times more likely to die in a disaster than men. Disasters can exacerbate existing gender inequalities within a community. And experts say addressing the root causes of those inequalities can help communities as a whole become more resilient in the wake of disaster.
According to Andy, from the CDC:
Dent: Anything that elevates the life experience of women, elevates the life experience of their families, you know, their extended families, their broader communities…. The SVI is created every other year. So any change in the experience of women in a community will be detectable in the next release of the SVI.
Mathewes: This could translate into real, meaningful scenarios. This might look like a young mother having enough money to evacuate a hazardous area safely or having health insurance that allows her to see a doctor regularly and manage a chronic illness that could make her extra vulnerable in a pandemic.
Mathewes: And women are at the center of the conversation around place and health in Chicago. Most of the organizations that make up the Chicago Environmental Justice Network are led by women.
Moreno-Mata It's just a lot of good healthy communication that happens amongst women in general, I think it tends to be. That's who tends to show up to some of our events or, like women in general, with families.
Mathewes: Mariah says women in her field have played a huge leadership role within environmental justice groups in Chicago –– particularly in connecting with residents and creating welcoming, accessible spaces for people to get involved.
Moreno-Mata And so comparing that to what is oftentimes sort of called like ‘Big Grees’, or like bigger groups. It’s like, a sort of disconnect, and sort of our approaches as far as, like, we want to center individuals, and meeting them where they're at as far as, like, knowing that people work, and then they have kids, and that they have all these other aspects of their lives. And so how do we create events and advocate for them in ways that, like, are just whatever is pressing to them at that moment, and then we can get to sort of like inviting other environmental issues and know that they're sort of like, they come as one eventually.
Mathewes: And in Chicago, women like Mariah and Edith are creating more spaces where residents can get together, talk about shared struggles, and build solidarity.
Moreno-Mata Some of our organizations host like nights where there's community dinner nights. And there's normally folks that, like, come out just because they, miss that feeling of, being in community and being surrounded by folks who are like living that same experience and having other commonalities. And so I think, going back to the very basics of what it means to create a community what it means to sort of foster that reliance on each other.
Mathewes: On August 3rd, LVEJO celebrated 30 years.
Clip: Feliz cumpleaños LVEJO…
Mathewes: Back in Gage Park, where social vulnerability is among the highest in the city, building community resilience requires a similar ground-up approach of meeting people where their needs truly are.
Here’s Flor.
Dominguez: People are like, so blindsided. You hear like, ‘We're going to help you. There's so many resources, the city…’ blah, blah. And then people don't get direct help. So I think that's what people always tell us, like, Oh, thank God, like, I needed food now, and you give it to me now. Like, I didn't have to go through step ABC to get food, you know, all this stuff. And I think that's like one of the most important things that people are like, wow, I actually really appreciate that. Like that helped me.
Mathewes: Flor worked with recently arrived migrants, many of whom were children she helped improve their English and do other school work. She says a meet-them-where-they-are approach is especially important when working with recently arrived children who are growing up in a socially vulnerable context and helping them take the first steps towards building a life and future for themselves. This might look like tutoring or helping distribute food to their families.
Dominguez: Or, you know, some kids have told us like, ‘Oh, I got bullied at school because I don’t speak English’ and things like that. So I think, overall, that's one of the biggest things that, is helping them, like, I've watched them for a couple of months, like grow and like, just become a little more confident and tell us like, ‘Oh, like actually like going to school.’
Mathewes: This is community health on a granular level. English language proficiency and high school graduation rates are two factors in the SVI calculation at play in Gage Park, and community organizations like GPLXC can help support progress in these areas.
SVI data is easily accessible. Policymakers, researchers, and advocates can see which communities struggle with language barriers, poverty, crowded housing, or disabilities. Step one in using SVI is accessing the broad data. As Andy notes, SVI can give a broad understanding of a community's challenges. But it's also useful to look beyond SVI.
Dent: Is there additional data out there that we can leverage so that we can develop a better intervention or protective measure to help the people in this community? There's data available out there, right? We're living in a world of data where we've got so much access it's often hard to make sense, but using the SVI is the first step, the contextual data is the second step.
Mathewes: He says it’s also important to fully integrate this measurement into planning.
Dent: The SVI needs to be integrated into decision-making processes at public health organizations. It needs to be integrated into how those organizations deploy resources, how those organizations kind of develop the protective measures and interventions that they develop. It needs to be baked into processes that we at the CDC employ and that our state and territorial and local and even tribal partners employ. It needs to be built in, it doesn't need to be an afterthought—it needs to be something that is part of the process so we can do a better job at helping these vulnerable communities.
Mathewes: The Chicago Latino communities with the highest SVIs provide evidence that some of the so-called inherent conditions—like high asthma rates, low high school graduation rates, and low insurance rates—are not permanent. In fact, using a tool like SVI can help advocates and residents quantify the conditions in a way that makes it possible for lawmakers to address them in tangible ways.
Mathewes: Specifically, when it comes to disaster preparedness, we don’t have to guess why some communities are more impacted than others. It’s all right in the numbers.
Virginia Lora:: 100 Latina Birthdays is an original production of LWC Studios. It is made possible by grants from Healthy Communities Foundation, Kellogg Foundation, Woods Fund Chicago, the Field Foundation of Illinois, Pritzker Foundation, and the Chicago Foundation for Women.
Mujeres Latinas en Acción is the series fiscal sponsor.
This episode was reported by Francesca Mathewes. Juleyka Lantigua is the show's creator, executive producer, and editor. Virginia Lora is the senior producer. Fact-checking by Jennifer Goren. Mixing by Anne Lim, and mixing and sound design by Tren Lightburn. Michelle Baker is our photo editor. Kori Doran is our marketing associate. Cover art by Reina Noriega.
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CITATION:
Mathewes, Francesca, reporter. “What Does it Mean to Be a Healthy Community?” 100 Latina Birthdays. LWC Studios, October 14, 2024. 100latinabirthdays.com.