Historically Informed Policy for Health Equity

What is The HIP Lab?

The Historically Informed Policy (HIP) Lab is an initiative of the Center for Healthcare History and Policy in the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing at Emory University in Atlanta. The HIP Lab is designed to bring historical knowledge to bear on policies designed to address critical health issues in the Southeast of the United States.

Scholars affiliated with The HIP Lab produce and compile historical resources for critical health issues to create policy recommendations for researchers, legislators, community advocates, and to inform policy debates. Our policy research centers on the socio-historical roots of health disparities and the social determinants of health.

2023-2024 Inaugural Visiting Scholar

Meet Ms. Udodiri R. Okwandu, the Center for Healthcare History and Policy’s first visiting scholar. Ms. Okwandu is a Doctoral Candidate in the History of Science Department and Presidential Scholar at Harvard University.  

HIP Lab Projects

  • Staying Alive in Little Five is an evidence-based, community-driven graphic novel informed by the experiences of service industry workers who encountered and responded to an overdose in their place of work.

  • This project utilizes Atlanta Police Department arrest data and GIS mapping techniques to demonstrate the way that historical factors like redlining continue to create structural problems for the provision of mental health care in Atlanta.

  • Las Voces seeks to understand the lived experience of immigrant farm workers in Georgia and Florida.

  • Examining the influence of Anti-Black racism on the healthcare encounters of Black women in Georgia.

Services

Courses

Fall 2024

NRSG 335: Historical Foundations of Health Disparities

Meeting Location: Tuesday and Thursday from 1:00 pm to 2:15 pm, Tarbutton Hall Room 105

Transforming Health Policy

The HIP Lab uses diverse methodologies, including oral history, policy analysis, literature reviews, and archival investigation to develop historically informed approaches to policies and interventions aimed at addressing health inequities.

Supporting Students

The HIP Lab provides a collaborative space for students and scholars from across Emory University to interact with community partners across the Southeast.

We want to hear your ideas!

Community Connections

The HIP Lab connects scholars, students and policy makers in order to develop innovative projects designed to understand the historical causes of inequity. Historical evidence combined with forward thinking policy can make real change in health outcomes. We are working on a variety of projects designed with and by the communities we hope to serve, including creating archives, films, white papers, policy briefs, and policy agendas.

Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. The enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being without distinction of race, religion, political belief, economic or social condition.”

—World Health Organization 1948

Contact Us

Feel free to contact us with any questions.