YOU'RE INVITED
Join us for our upcoming free, one-day symposiums, where we invite community members, leaders, scholars, educators, and students to collaborate on improving health outcomes through community-engaged practices. Together, we'll foster connection by highlighting community-centered efforts in education, employment, food access, housing, and population health.
POVERTY | EQUITY | INFLUENCING FACTORS: A REACH SYMPOSIUM
Date: Wednesday, April 9, 2025
Location(s): New Brunswick: Cook Student Center*, 59 Biel Road
Camden: Camden Campus Center, 326 Penn St.
Newark: Paul Robeson Campus Center, 350 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.
Time: 9:00 A.M. - 5:00 P.M.
*The symposium will be hosted in New Brunswick and live-streamed to in-person events** on the Newark and Camden campuses.
This symposium, hosted by REACH in partnership with our Employment Table, aims to engage the Rutgers community, our community partners, faculty from various academic institutions, funders, and policymakers in a candid conversation around poverty and its influencing factors. This day will also be a showcase of the work of REACH through our collaborative learning tables and our grantees. Sessions will feature panel discussions and presentations by Rutgers faculty and researchers, community leaders, and others that center around the key social determinants upon which REACH’s work is focused – education, employment, food access and food security, housing and population health – and their interconnectedness with racial justice, poverty and health.
*In-person events in Camden and Newark will include livestreams from New Brunswick of all plenary sessions and select breakouts, as well as facilitated discussions, networking, breakfast and lunch, and an autographed copy of Dr. Desmond's book, Poverty, By America.
WORKING AGENDA
8:15 a.m. Registration, networking, and light breakfast
9:00 a.m. Opening Remarks:
Denise Rodgers, Vice Chancellor Interprofessional Programs Director- Rutgers Urban Health and Wellness Institute
Jonathan Holloway, President, Rutgers University
9:45 a.m. Concurrent Breakout Sessions
- Economic Mobility: Barriers and Strategies
- Food Insecurity and Adequate Access
- What is a Livable Wage? Income Equity Issues
- The Role of Education in Alleviating Poverty
Live Sessions in Newark and Camden
-Who is ALICE?
10:45 a.m. Break
11:00 a.m. Concurrent Breakout Sessions
- Policy Recommendations and Future Implications
- The Role of AI in Sustainable Employment
- Using Research and Policy to Address Housing Instability & Homelessness
- Innovative Approaches to Health Equity
- Collaborative Solutions: Building Community Partnerships
- Facilitated Conversations in Newark and Camden
12:00 p.m. Lunch
1:15 p.m. Keynote: Matthew Desmond, Understanding Poverty and its Contributing Factors
Introduction: Prabhas Moghe, Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs
2:45 p.m. Book distribution and Break
3:15 p.m. Closing Panel: Who’s in the Room – Our Collective Actions Toward Poverty in NJ
4:15 p.m. Closing Remarks and Call to Action
4:30 – 6:00 p.m. Reception
FEATURED SPEAKER: MATTHEW DESMOND
Desmond is the Maurice P. During Professor of Sociology and the founder and principal investigator of the Eviction Lab at Princeton University. In 2018, The Eviction Lab published the first-ever national dataset of evictions in America, collecting millions of data points going back to 2000, and it has gone on to serve as a resource hub for the millions of American renters who faced increased housing insecurity due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
A former member of the Harvard Society of Fellows, he is also the author of the award-winning book On the Fireline, the coauthor of two books on race, and the editor of a collection of studies on severe deprivation in America. He has written essays on educational inequality, dangerous work, political ideology, race and social theory, and the inner-city housing market. His work has been supported by the Gates, Horowitz, Ford, JBP, MacArthur, and National Science, Russell Sage, and W.T. Grant Foundations, as well as the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. He is a Contributing Writer for The New York Times Magazine, and his writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the New Yorker and The Chicago Tribune.
BRIDGING THE GAPS: COLLABORATIVE PATHWAYS TO ACHIEVE HEALTH EQUITY IN NEW JERSEY
Date: Thursday, March 13, 2025
Location: Great Hall, 15 Washington Street, Newark, NJ 07102
Time: 9:00 A.M. - 4:00 P.M.
This symposium, hosted by the REACH Population Health Table, will explore innovative, community-engaged strategies, and foster collaboration across New Jersey to create long-term change in our communities. Speakers, including community leaders and researchers, will provide actionable recommendations for advancing health equity, enhancing collaboration, and guiding the implementation and evaluation of health policies that effectively target and reduce health inequities.
