The Team
Rajiv Bhatia, MD, MPH (top)
Director, Occupational and Environmental Health, SFDPH
Rajiv Bhatia, MD, MPH is the Director of Occupational and Environmental Health for the San Francisco Department of Public Health and an Assistant Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of California San Francisco. He has been responsible for environmental health law and policy in San Francisco since 1998 and has broadened the scope of local environmental health to include issues of labor rights, working conditions, housing, land use, transportation, injury prevention, and food security. He has pioneered the practice of health impact assessment (HIA) in the US, institutionalizing a HIA unit in San Francisco government, teaching the first US graduate course on HIA at the University of California at Berkeley, and co-founding Human Impact Partners, a non-profit organization working nationally to build the field. He is a founding member of the Health and Social Justice Team for the National Association of County and City Health Officials and the co-editor of Tackling Health Inequities through Public Health Practice: Theory to Action. Dr. Bhatia earned a MD from Stanford University in 1989.
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.
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.
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.
Meg Wall, MPH (top)
Epidemiologist, Program on Health, Equity, and Sustainability, SFDPH
Meg is the manager of SFDPH's Healthy Development Measurement Tool (HDMT). Meg's work entails coordinating regular updates of the tool's over 100 indicators of urban health and sustainability, maintaining the the currency of all research and best practices presented on the HDMT website, coordinating an annual HDMT training, and serving as a public point of contact for all inquiries related to the HDMT. Most recently, Meg completed an assessment of health related environmental and social conditions in Bayview Hunters Point for the San Francisco Healthy Homes Project, a project of the San Francisco Department of Environment, using indicators from the HDMT. In addition to managing the HDMT, Meg works on various additional projects related to public infrastructure, including food access and parks.
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.
Community Council Participants
Bruce Wolfe, San Francisco Community Land Trust
Participating Government Agencies
Lydia Zaverukha, San Francisco Recreation and Park Department
Technical Advisors