Today there is another installment in the spring 2022 Microbes and Social Equity speaker series! Each week, we’ll hear from a researcher who will share their work and perspective on how microbes are involved in all aspects of our lives, and how those microbes can affect individuals, communities, and ecosystems.
This series will run from Jan 19 – May 4, Wednesdays at 12:00 – 13:00 EST. These are presented over Zoom, and open to researchers, practitioners, students, and the public. Registration is free, and required for each individual seminar you would like to attend. You can find the full speaker list, details, and registration links for each seminar in the series here.
Dr. Gabriel Rosenberg, Photo borrowed from Duke University faculty page.
About the speaker: Dr. Gabriel N. Rosenberg, PhD is an Associate Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies and History at Duke University. He is a food/agricultural researcher, and author of “On the scene of zoonotic intimacies jungle, market, pork plant”. From his faculty profile page, “Broadly, Gabriel Rosenberg’s research investigates the historical and contemporary linkages among gender, sexuality, and the global food system. In particular, he studies spaces of agricultural production as important sites for the constitution and governance of intimacy – intimacy both between and among humans, animals, and plants.”
Today there is another installment in the spring 2022 Microbes and Social Equity speaker series! Each week, we’ll hear from a researcher who will share their work and perspective on how microbes are involved in all aspects of our lives, and how those microbes can affect individuals, communities, and ecosystems.
This series will run from Jan 19 – May 4, Wednesdays at 12:00 – 13:00 EST. These are presented over Zoom, and open to researchers, practitioners, students, and the public. Registration is free, and required for each individual seminar you would like to attend. You can find the full speaker list, details, and registration links for each seminar in the series here.
“Chasing Ghosts: Race, Racism, and the Future of Microbiome Research”
Dr. Travis J. De Wolfe, PhD; Dr. Mohammed Rafi Arefin, PhD; Dr. Maria Rebolleda-Gomez, PhD; and Dr. Amber Benezra, PhD
About the speakers: This special seminar will feature a collaborative talk from Dr. Travis J. De Wolfe, PhD; Dr. Mohammed Rafi Arefin, PhD; Dr. Maria Rebolleda-Gomez, PhD; and Dr. Amber Benezra, PhD. This team recently published a transformative piece, “Chasing Ghosts: Race, Racism, and the Future of Microbiome Research“, and will be each discuss aspects of that.
Travis J. De Wolfe
Department of Pediatrics, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Travis J. De Wolfe is a Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research-funded Postdoctoral Fellow with the Department of Pediatrics at the University of British Columbia and BC Children’s Hospital. His research interests include Clostridioides difficile infection, colonization resistance, inflammatory bowel diseases, host-microbe interactions, and ecology of the gut microbiome.
Mohammed Rafi Arefin
Department of Geography, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Mohammed Rafi Arefin is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of British Columbia. His research and teaching are focused on urban environmental politics with a particular focus on sanitation, health, and environmental justice in the Middle East and North America.
Amber Benezra
Department of Science and Technology Studies, Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, New Jersey, USA
Amber Benezra is an Assistant Professor of Science and Technology Studies at Stevens Institute of Technology. She is a sociocultural anthropologist researching how studies of the human microbiome intersect with biomedical ethics, public health/technological infrastructures, and care. In partnership with human microbial ecologists, she is developing an “anthropology of microbes” to address global health problems across disciplines.
María Rebolleda Gómez
Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, University of California Irvine, Irvine, California, USA
María Rebolleda Gómez is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California, Irvine. Her research explores ecological and evolutionary dynamics in model microbial communities. She is also interested in Environmental History, Philosophy, and History of Science. María was born in Mexico City.
Today there is another installment in the spring 2022 Microbes and Social Equity speaker series! Each week, we’ll hear from a researcher who will share their work and perspective on how microbes are involved in all aspects of our lives, and how those microbes can affect individuals, communities, and ecosystems.
This series will run from Jan 19 – May 4, Wednesdays at 12:00 – 13:00 EST. These are presented over Zoom, and open to researchers, practitioners, students, and the public. Registration is free, and required for each individual seminar you would like to attend. You can find the full speaker list, details, and registration links for each seminar in the series here.
“Antimicrobial Resistance: Our Next Epidemic of Inequality?”
Dr. Maya Nadimpalli. Photo courtesy of Dr. Nadimpalli.
About the speaker: Dr. Maya Nadimpalli is a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Tufts University, and a core faculty member at Tufts’ Stuart B. Levy Center for the Integrated Management of Antimicrobial Resistance. She received her B.A. & Sc. in Environment from McGill University, Canada, and her M.S. and Ph.D. at the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She uses genomic and epidemiological approaches to understand how exposures to food, animals, and the environment can impact human colonization and infection with antibiotic-resistant bacteria, particularly in low-resource settings. She has led research studies in rural North Carolina and in Southeast Asia, and is currently leading two studies focused on children’s health in urban informal settlements of Lima, Peru. She will be joining Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health as an Assistant Professor this May.
Today there is another installment in the spring 2022 Microbes and Social Equity speaker series! Each week, we’ll hear from a researcher who will share their work and perspective on how microbes are involved in all aspects of our lives, and how those microbes can affect individuals, communities, and ecosystems.
This series will run from Jan 19 – May 4, Wednesdays at 12:00 – 13:00 EST. These are presented over Zoom, and open to researchers, practitioners, students, and the public. Registration is free, and required for each individual seminar you would like to attend. You can find the full speaker list, details, and registration links for each seminar in the series here.
“20 important questions in microbial exposure and social equity + recent work on urban greenspace microbiomes”
About the speaker: Dr. Jake Robinson is an ecologist and researcher. He recently completed a PhD at the University of Sheffield, UK. His academic interests lie at the intersection of microbial ecology, ecosystem restoration and social research. He will soon be publishing a book called Invisible Friends, which is all about our extraordinary relationship with microbes, and how they shape our lives and the world around us.
Today there is another installment in the spring 2022 Microbes and Social Equity speaker series! Each week, we’ll hear from a researcher who will share their work and perspective on how microbes are involved in all aspects of our lives, and how those microbes can affect individuals, communities, and ecosystems.
This series will run from Jan 19 – May 4, Wednesdays at 12:00 – 13:00 EST. These are presented over Zoom, and open to researchers, practitioners, students, and the public. Registration is free, and required for each individual seminar you would like to attend. You can find the full speaker list, details, and registration links for each seminar in the series here.
“Diet, Microbial Metabolites, and Cancer Disparities”.
About the speaker: Dr. Wolf completed her PhD in Nutritional Sciences with a focus on microbial sulfur metabolism at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in December 2018. During her graduate training, she simultaneously completed the Didactic Program in Dietetics and became a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist. Since that time, she has been a postdoctoral fellow at the Cancer Education and Career Development Program NCI T32 at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her research investigates microbial mechanisms of cancer health disparities related to inequitable food access and quality. To do so, she uses techniques in molecular microbiology and novel enzyme characterization to understand the metabolic capacity of the human gut microbiome. With her expertise in nutrition and dietetics, she then examines whether dietary intake shifts microbial ecology and function toward the formation of deleterious microbial metabolites contributing to cancer risk. Given that dietary behaviors are shaped by the social and structural environment, her future work will explore relationships between the neighborhood food environment and microbial metabolism in order to mitigate the inequitable burden of cancer in certain groups.
This Wednesday there is another installment in the spring 2022 Microbes and Social Equity speaker series! Each week, we’ll hear from a researcher who will share their work and perspective on how microbes are involved in all aspects of our lives, and how those microbes can affect individuals, communities, and ecosystems.
This series will run from Jan 19 – May 4, Wednesdays at 12:00 – 13:00 EST. These are presented over Zoom, and open to researchers, practitioners, students, and the public. Registration is free, and required for each individual seminar you would like to attend. You can find the full speaker list, details, and registration links for each seminar in the series here.
“The role of microbiomes in sustainable agriculture and food systems integrated with human health”.
Dr. Franck Carbonero. Photo borrowed from WSU faculty page.
About the speaker: Dr. Frank Carbonero, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Nutrition and Exercise Physiology at Washington State University Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine.
He received his Bachelor’s of Science in Biology from Universite Joseph Fourier, in France, his Master’s of Science degree in Ecology from Universite Blaise Pascal, in France, and his Ph.D. degree in Microbiology from the University of Warwick, in the United Kingdom. After that, he was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign for three years, and has served as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Food Science at the University of Arkansas since 2013. His research program is focused on nutrition and its impact on the human and animal gut microbiome, with focus on dietary bioactives, including from berries.
Today there is another installment in the spring 2022 Microbes and Social Equity speaker series! Each week, we’ll hear from a researcher who will share their work and perspective on how microbes are involved in all aspects of our lives, and how those microbes can affect individuals, communities, and ecosystems.
This series will run from Jan 19 – Apr 27, Wednesdays at 12:00 – 13:00 EST. These are presented over Zoom, and open to researchers, practitioners, students, and the public. Registration is free, and required for each individual seminar you would like to attend. You can find the full speaker list, details, and registration links for each seminar in the series here.
About the speaker: Dr. Katherine (Katie) Amato is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Northwestern University. From her faculty profile page: “Katie Amato is a biological anthropologist studying the gut microbiota in the broad context of host ecology and evolution. She is particularly interested in understanding how changes in the gut microbiota impact human nutrition and health in populations around the world, especially those with limited access to nutritional resources.”
Talk summary: The talk explores how the microbiome is likely to be a mediating pathway that translates disparities in people’s environments to disparities in health outcomes. It outlines the current state of the literature in this area and broadly suggests ways to move forward. Dr. Amato’s recent publication on this topic can be found here.
Today kicks off the spring 2022 Microbes and Social Equity speaker series! Each week, we’ll hear from a researcher who will share their work and perspective on how microbes are involved in all aspects of our lives, and how those microbes can affect individuals, communities, and ecosystems.
This series will run from Jan 19 – Apr 27, Wednesdays at 12:00 – 13:00 EST. These are presented over Zoom, and open to researchers, practitioners, students, and the public. Registration is free, and required for each individual seminar you would like to attend. You can find the full speaker list, details, and registration links for each seminar in the series here.
“Microbes at the nexus of environmental, biological, and social research”
About the speaker: Dr. Sue Ishaq is an Assistant Professor of Animal and Veterinary Science at the University of Maine, in the School of Food and Agriculture. She received her doctorate in Animal, Nutrition and Food Science from the University of Vermont in 2015 where her graduate study focused on the rumen microbiology of the moose. She held post-doctoral positions at Montana State University, and a research faculty position at the University of Oregon. Since 2019, her lab in Maine focuses on host-associated microbial communities in animals and humans, and in particular, how host and microbes interact in the gut. In addition to her research on gut microbes, Dr. Ishaq is the founder of the Microbes and Social Equity working group. This group formed to examine, publicize and promote a research program on the reciprocal impact of social inequality and microbiomes, both human and environmental.
Registration is now open for the Microbes and Social Equity speaker series, which is in its second year this spring. Hurry, the first seminar is on Wednesday, Jan 19th!
Microorganisms are critical to many aspects of biological life, including human health. The human body is a veritable universe for microorganisms: some pass through but once, some are frequent tourists, and some spend their entire existence in the confines of our body tissues. The collective microbial community, our microbiome, can be impacted by the details of our lifestyle, including diet, hygiene, health status, and more, but many are driven by social, economic, medical, or political constraints that restrict available choices that may impact our health.
Access to resources is the basis for creating and resolving social equity—access to healthcare, healthy foods, a suitable living environment, and to beneficial microorganisms, but also access to personal and occupational protection to avoid exposure to infectious disease. This speaker series explores the way that microbes connect public policy, social disparities, and human health, as well as the ongoing research, education, policy, and innovation in this field.
“The Microbes and Social Equity Speaker Series 2022”
Spring 2022; Jan 19 – Apr 27, Wednesdays at 12:00 – 13:00 EST
Presented over Zoom. Registration is free, and required for each seminar.
Hosting Organization: MSE and the University of Maine Institute of Medicine
“Microbes at the nexus of environmental, biological, and social research”
About the speaker: Dr. Sue Ishaq is an Assistant Professor of Animal and Veterinary Science at the University of Maine, in the School of Food and Agriculture. She received her doctorate in Animal, Nutrition and Food Science from the University of Vermont in 2015 where her graduate study focused on the rumen microbiology of the moose. She held post-doctoral positions at Montana State University, and a research faculty position at the University of Oregon. Since 2019, her lab in Maine focuses on host-associated microbial communities in animals and humans, and in particular, how host and microbes interact in the gut. In addition to her research on gut microbes, Dr. Ishaq is the founder of the Microbes and Social Equity working group. This group formed to examine, publicize and promote a research program on the reciprocal impact of social inequality and microbiomes, both human and environmental.
Dr. Katie Amato. Photo borrowed from Northwestern University
About the speaker: Dr. Katherine (Katie) Amato is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Northwestern University. From her faculty profile page: “Katie Amato is a biological anthropologist studying the gut microbiota in the broad context of host ecology and evolution. She is particularly interested in understanding how changes in the gut microbiota impact human nutrition and health in populations around the world, especially those with limited access to nutritional resources.”
Talk summary: The talk explores how the microbiome is likely to be a mediating pathway that translates disparities in people’s environments to disparities in health outcomes. It outlines the current state of the literature in this area and broadly suggests ways to move forward. Dr. Amato’s recent publication on this topic can be found here.
About the speaker: Dr. Jake Robinson is an ecologist and researcher. He recently completed a PhD at the University of Sheffield, UK. His academic interests lie at the intersection of microbial ecology, ecosystem restoration and social research. He will soon be publishing a book called Invisible Friends, which is all about our extraordinary relationship with microbes, and how they shape our lives and the world around us.
About the speaker: Dr. Douglas Call is a Regents Professor at the Paul G. Allen School for Global Health, in Molecular Epidemiology, and the Associate Director for Research and Graduate Education, at Washington State University.
Dr. Kristina Lyons. Photo reused from the University of Pennsylvania faculty page.
About the speaker: Dr. Kristina Lyons is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology and with the Penn Program in Environmental Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania. She also holds affiliations with the Center for Experimental Ethnography and the Center for Latin American and Latinx Studies. Kristina’s current research is situated at the interfaces of socio-ecological conflicts, science, and legal studies in Colombia and Latin America. Her manuscript, Vital Decomposition: Soil Practitioners and Life Politics (Duke 2020), was awarded honorable mention by the Bryce Wood Book Award committee from the Latin American Studies Association. She has also collaborated on the creation of soundscapes, street performances, photographic essays, graphic novels, popular education audiovisual projects, community radio programs, digital storytelling platforms, and various forms of literary writing.
Talk summary: How does attention to and stewardship of soils point to alternative frameworks for living and dying? Dr. Lyons explores the way life strives to flourish in the face of violence, criminalization, and poisoning produced by militarized, growth-oriented development in the midst of the U.S.-Colombia war on drugs.
Title TBD
Dr. Travis J. De Wolfe, PhD
Date TBD, 2022, 12:00 – 13:00 EST.
About the speaker: Dr. Travis J. De Wolfe, Ph.D. is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of British Columbia.
About the speaker: Dr. Maya Hey is a postdoctoral researcher with the Future Organisms project as part of an international trans-disciplinary team investigating Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI). She brings a humanities and social science perspective to the life sciences, calling upon feminist, intersectional, and multispecies approaches to map out human response-ability in a more-than-human world. She is vested in questions related to fermentation, particularly as they relate to discourses of health, the rhetoric of microbiomes, and how we come to know microbial life.”
The Microbes and Social Equity working group and The University of Maine Institute of Medicine present an inaugural symposium on:
“Microbes, Social Equity, and Rural Health”
June 14 – 18th, 2021
Format: virtual meeting, Zoom platform.
Day 1 of the Microbes and Social Equity virtual symposium
Session 5: “Access to healthcare and the microbiome”
Friday, June 18th, 13:00 ~ 16:30 EST. Registration for this session is closed.
Section leader: Emily Wissel
Access to healthcare, including treatment and preventative care, is critical to moderate beneficial host-microbe interactions and mitigate host-pathogen interactions, yet healthcare is inequitably distributed and often curbed by social policy. For instance, maternity care is well-demonstrated to improve health outcomes and facilitate the transfer of beneficial maternal microbes to newborns. Policies which support breastfeeding likewise promote this transfer of maternal microbes. Similarly, newborns and infants with access to care in their first five years of life have better outcomes overall than those with limited access. This difference in care during early life can impact lifelong differences in outcomes, reinforcing inequalities present at birth. This session will cover topics from the vaginal microbiome during pregnancy to the infant gut microbiome after birth, with perspectives from a clinician, public health researchers, and a biological scientist.
Program and Registration
Registration, a full speaker list and program, and details of each day can be found here.
Registration will occur for each (day) section individually, so participants can select which topics to participate in, or all of them.
Registration is free and open to the public.
Summary
Microorganisms are critical to many aspects of biological life, including human health. The human body is a veritable universe for microorganisms: some pass through but once, some are frequent tourists, and some spend their entire existence in the confines of our body tissues. The collective microbial community, our microbiome, can be impacted by the details of our lifestyle, including diet, hygiene, health status, and more, but many are driven by social, economic, medical, or political constraints that restrict available choices that may impact our health.
Many human clinical conditions or diseases have been established as being related to the state of the human microbiome. It is known that collective social inequity can drive the prevalence, morbidity, and mortality of some of these diseases or conditions. When access to a nutritious diet and healthcare are impeded by social inequity, these disparities can also affect the human microbiome; this can further contribute to reduced or poorly functioning microbiomes.
Access to resources is the basis for creating and resolving social equity—access to healthcare, healthy foods, a suitable living environment, and to beneficial microorganisms, but also access to personal and occupational protection to avoid exposure to infectious disease. The emergence of the SARS-CoV2 (COVID-19) pandemic has dramatically altered our daily lives and the availability and ability to access essential resources, which has been worsened by pre-existing social inequity. Yet, the pandemic has also highlighted the inherent social disparity among those more likely to be exposed to infectious diseases.
This meeting highlights recent investigations into beneficial and detrimental instances of microbial exposure, in the context of how social policy may mediate or deepen disparities between and within populations. In addition to invited presentations on thematic sections, each section will involve a discussion session using smaller breakout groups, to facilitate conversations and brainstorming between attendees. These groups will be arranged around smaller themes or research questions, and group members will identify knowledge gaps for future research, as well as list actionable steps that can be taken using existing research to promote equitable social policy. Ideally, meeting attendees will gain knowledge, collaborators and connections, and a path forward for turning their research into evidence-based policy to support public health.
Meeting dynamics
Unlike traditional symposium formats, this meeting will present some plenary-style talks by experts in the field, including biological scientists, social scientists, practitioners or policy makers, as well as facilitate discussion among participants. Each thematic section will feature 90 minutes of talks, which will be recorded and made publicly available after the live session. After each plenary session, there will be 90 minutes of discussion in groups led by speakers and MSE group members, and assisted by notetakers, with ~10 participants per breakout room. Participants will be encouraged to “problem solve” a suggested topic or one of their own choosing. The goal is to create action items that are meaningful for group participants, such as ideas for curricula development, identifying research needs or best practices, suggestions for engaging research in policy, and more.
The Ishaq Lab 