Analyze

I've found myself returning to thinking about/around/within interstitial spaces of care, particularly within hospital settings, interested in how viral activity unsettles the ideas we have around space and boundaries, both biological and infrastructural. In COVID-19 pathology and response, the inbetween, the interstitial, become sites challenge and possibility. With COVID-19, we see an acknowledgment of once forgotten spaces quite obviously, with hospital atria and hallways being reconfigured into patient care spaces, makeshift morgues established in refrigerated trucks, and hospitals spilling out into neighboring streets and parks. More than ever, we see how hospitals are simultaneously bounded and unbounded--the most stable and unstable sites for care. Along this line of thought, what might thinking through hospitals as heterotopia of crisis and deviation afford?

Foucault outlines six principles for heterotopic spaces

The heterotopia is capable of juxtaposing in a single real place several spaces, several sites that are in themselves incompatible

Heterotopias are most often linked to slices in time—which is to say that they open onto what might be termed, for the sake of symmetry, heterochronies. The heterotopia begins to function at full capacity when men arrive at a sort of absolute break with their traditional time. This situation shows us that the cemetery is indeed a highly heterotopic place since, for the individual, the cemetery begins with this strange heterochrony, the loss of life, and with this quasi-eternity in which her permanent lot is dissolution and disappearance.

Heterotopias always presuppose a system of opening and closing that both isolates them and makes them penetrable. In general, the heterotopic site is not freely accessible like a public place. Either the entry is compulsory, as in the case of entering a barracks or a prison, or else the individual has to submit to rites and purifications.

I'm currently based in Troy, NY where I recently completed a PhD in Science and Technology Studies.  I'll soon be living in NYC to attend medical school. I can be reached at amorgan14[at]gmail[dot]com

I've long been interested in the disaster of routine medical care in the U.S. healthcare system. As far as COVID-19 is concerned, I'm particularly interested in how the long-term health impacts of intensive care are conceptualized and communicated (including Post Intensive Care Syndrome (PICS)) and the tensions between acute and chronic illness, broadly. 

How is the aftermath of COVID-19 crisis being imagined in different settings? How is this shaping beliefs, practices, and policies?

• Many of the 50,000 residents of Ironbound are overburdened by polluting facilities and air pollutants from the second largest seaport in the country, an international airport, and rail lines.

• 25% percent of the children in the community suffer from asthma, which is three times the state average.

• The technical resources developed for the Ironbound community can be used by other communities across the country to develop their own air monitoring programs in areas where pollution is a concern.

Yes they have a way in plan to help address this issue to be resolved over the next couple years. Working with the commission, the students to help create better and improved ways to deal with sewage waste. Already there is a "solids and floatables" control that has been in place, which has significantly helped reduce the space that trash and other objects to not take up space that could be used by the water flow. This has also reduced the amount of trash that was getting dumped into waterways. 

charts like this only show how any are in poverty.  whats not shown is how these people and families got to this point and what the common theme is between them

The main point of the article was that EPA researchers input portable air sensors that monitor levels of particulate matter and nitrogen oxide- pollutants that cause short and long-term health effects and are regulated under Clean Air Act. The goal was to get good on-the-ground air quality data for our environmental justice community. Data that is collected, understood, and used by those being directly impacted by the pollution. This was supported by the input of EPA air sensors installed into the communities. 

The membership is comprised of the Passaic Valley Sewage Commission working in hands with New Jersey Future. The NJ future consist of students from their own communities so boht working together, the community and the commission help build and work better together towards creating better and quick solutions. 

this diagram represents poverty rates from 15 years ago.  this is the history of newarks poverty rates towards families children and more.  

Yes, filing complaints in one way might help reduce pollution but it won't completely eliminate it. I think by filing complaints, it does give the issue precendence in coming to the top so people become more aware by it, but along wiht complaining people need to take action and come up with plans to resolve the complaints.

The kind of technology and/or infrastructure that they rely on are one big road map. Having an eye on each area as a whole not only helps the organization aide in seeing where the problem relys, but also has the commuities be able to keep an eye out to pinpoint the exacy areas that have the problems. This also helps by not only the organizations but also the communities being able to come up with better and quicker solutions.