The Team
Rajiv Bhatia, MD, MPH (top)
Director, Occupational and Environmental Health, SFDPH
Rajiv has been the Director of Occupational and Environmental Health since 1998. Trained in medicine, epidemiology, and environmental health, in this position he has developed and implemented environmental health policy for San Francisco and broadened his agency’s environmental health practice to extend to labor rights, working conditions, housing design, land use and transportation policy and planning, and community foods resources. Dr. Bhatia has been a pioneer in the field of health impact assessment (HIA) and has applied HIA both to analyze and inform local public policy and to integrate health considerations within Environmental Impact Assessment. Dr. Bhatia teaches a graduate course on the health impacts of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and regularly conducts HIA trainings for peers, public institutions, and community organizations. Dr. Bhatia was a founding member of the Health and Social Justice Team for the National Association of County and City Health Officials and a former board member of Pesticide Action Network and the Asian Pacific Environmental Network.
Cynthia Comerford Scully, MA (top)
Senior Health Program Planner, Environmental Health Section, SFDPH
Cyndy's work focuses on planning and developing public health programs and providing technical assistance to incorporate public health considerations into local planning decisions. Programmatic areas of focus include environmental policy, land use planning, transportation, food security and spatial analysis. Cyndy recently directed a Community Based Transportation Plan for a Walkable and Bikeable Treasure Island. Past projects include: the Eastern Neighborhoods Community Health Impact Assessment, collaboration on the design of the Healthy Development Measurement Tool, development of the Pedestrian Environmental Quality Index and the Retail Food Availability Survey, and creation of a geographic sound propagation model to be used for emergency response planning. Her current research includes developing a pedestrian model to predict pedestrian demand and understanding how green building design can improve health outcomes.
Lili Farhang, MPH (top)
Project Manager, Program on Health, Equity, and Sustainability, SFDPH
Lili’s work broadly focuses on assessing and addressing the health and equity impacts of urban development. Specifically, she manages the Healthy Development Measurement Tool, an innovative and ground-breaking evidence-based practice used to consider health in land use planning and decision-making. Lili is also working on a health impact assessment of public housing redevelopment in San Francisco, as well as health impact assessments of proposed paid sick day laws at the state and national levels. Lili also coordinates an annual health impact assessment training for aspiring practitioners, as well as provides other trainings and presentations on HIA and the HDMT. She is also on the Board of Directors for Human Impact Partners and is a member of the Center for Political Education collective.
Megan Gaydos, MPH (top)
Planning and Policy Analyst, Program on Health, Equity, and Sustainability, SFDPH
Megan’s work focuses on advancing health equity and well-being in the living and work environment through policy and data analysis, program planning and evaluation, and participatory research. As a member of the Urban Health and Place team, Megan helps develop and apply the public infrastructure and social cohesion sections of the Healthy Development Measurement Tool (HDMT) to land use plans and projects, and provides trainings on health impact assessment (HIA) methods. As the coordinator of the Work Environment team, Megan supports multiple community-based research projects to document and improve working conditions faced by low-wage workers such as day laborers, domestic workers and restaurant workers. Megan also helps develop health equity-related curriculm, materials and events, such as the screening of Unnatural Causes. Prior to her work with SFDPH, Megan worked as a health researcher and advocate at various organizations including the Berkeley Media Studies Group, Physicians for Human Rights, Miriam Hospital Immunology Center, and Progreso Latino.
Jennifer McLaughin, MS (top)
Health Program Planner, Environmental Health Section, SFDPH
Jen works closely with several programs within Environmental Health, including the Program on Health, Equity, and Sustainability (PHES), assisting in the development and application of health impact assessment tools for citywide applications. She provides assistance on the Healthy Development Measurement Tool, a community health assessment tool, specifically focusing on open space, food access, and spatial analyses. She participated in developing the Neighborhood Completeness Indicator which evaluates existing key public and retail services throughout San Francisco neighborhoods to identify health inequities. Jen is working to develop a Bicycle Environmental Quality Index to assess and identify the safety of bicycle environments in San Francisco. In addition, she conducts air quality assessments, measuring levels of particulate matter, for urban infill residential development to determine if ventilation requirements or other mitigations are required. Jen is currently involved with the City’s GIS Users Group and the Open Space Task Force.
Megan Wier, MPH (top)
Epidemiologist, Program on Health, Equity, and Sustainability, SFDPH
Megan’s work focuses on developing and applying quantitative health impact assessment tools to support safe, sustainable and equitable transportation and land use planning and policy in San Francisco. Her current research projects include a health impact assessment of congestion pricing, community-based participatory research to assess and mitigate the cumulative health impacts of heavy traffic on local residents, and the on-going refinement and application of the SFDPH Vehicle-Pedestrian Injury Collision model to predict and prevent death and injury to pedestrians in the context of planning. Megan also coordinates bi-monthly peer review sessions of interdisciplinary research and tools being developed to support healthy planning as a part of the statewide Healthy Places Coalition, and a is a member of the SFDPH team that supports the Healthy Development Measurement Tool and its application.
Acknowledgements (top)
We would like to thank the Community Council of the Eastern Neighborhoods Community Health Impact Assessment for their generous commitment to the process and to the development of this Tool. We also thank the many former members of the SFDPH ENCHIA team for their contributions to various aspects of project design and implementation.