2024 Olmsted Network Conference: Advancing Health, Inclusivity and Equity in Public Spaces

Advancing Health, Inclusivity and Equity in Public Spaces

Despite solid evidence of the public health importance of public parks, too many communities lack easy access to the mental and physical benefits provided. This panel will examine how Olmsted’s landscapes should be seen as critical public health infrastructure.

Elizabeth Bradley (moderator)
Elizabeth H. Bradley, PhD, has served as President of Vassar since July 2017. She is an unabashed supporter of liberal arts education and is deeply engaged with research on the performance and quality of higher education institutions in the US. With her leadership, Vassar has established partnerships in India, Rwanda, and the United Kingdom to develop models of liberal arts higher education in these settings. Bradley has served on the NY Governor’s Task Force on Re-Opening during the pandemic, the MidHudson Regional Economic Development Council, the Board of the American Association of Colleges & University, and the Board of Nuvance Health. Prior to becoming the President of Vassar, Bradley, a noted public health expert, was on the faculty at Yale for more than twenty years. Bradley has published extensively and has co-authored three books including The American Healthcare Paradox: Why Spending More Is Getting Us Less. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Dr. Harold Schwartz
Harold I. (Hank) Schwartz, M.D., currently serves as Psychiatrist-in-Chief Emeritus, at Hartford Hospital’s Institute of Living (where he nurtured a campus designed by FLO for over thirty years) and Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine. Dr. Schwartz has served in many leadership roles as an advocate for psychiatric patients, psychiatric services and the profession of psychiatry. He has served on the Connecticut Governor’s Blue Ribbon Commission on Mental Health and the Governor’s Sandy Hook Advisory Commission, co-authoring the definitive reports on that tragedy. Dr. Schwartz graduated from the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and completed a fellowship in Forensic Psychiatry at New York University/Bellevue Hospital Center. He is widely published and has appeared frequently in various media venues. He is a Fellow of the American College of Psychiatrists, a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and has won numerous awards and
honors.

Susan Masino
Susan A. Masino, PhD, is a neuroscientist and the Vernon D. Roosa Professor of Applied Science at Trinity College in Hartford, CT. Dr. Masino is on the Open Space Committee in Simsbury, CT, is the Hartford County Coordinator for the Old Growth Forest Network and was recently a Charles Bullard Fellow
in Forest Research at Harvard University. Her laboratory-based research focuses on mechanisms of brain health and disease. Her scholarship outside the lab focuses on the power of wild nature to mitigate climate change, support communities and protect the health of all species. In 2024 she was certified by the Association of Nature and Forest Therapy Guide as part of an international cohort of health professionals.

Dr. Howard Frumkin
Howard Frumkin is a physicianepidemiologist whose career has focused
on the intersection of health and the environment. He was Director of the CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health and Dean of the University of Washington School of Public Health. He is now Senior Vice President of The Trust for Public Land. His books include Making Healthy Places: Designing
and Building for Health, Well-Being, and Sustainability (Island Press, 2011 and 2022), Environmental Health: From Global to Local (Wiley, 3rd Edition 2016), Planetary Health: Protecting Nature to Protect Ourselves (Island
Press, 2020) and Planetary Health: Safeguarding Human Health and the Environment in the Anthropocene (Cambridge University Press, 2021). Born and raised in Poughkeepsie and educated at Brown (A.B.), the University of Pennsylvania (M.D.) and Harvard (M.P.H. and Dr.P.H.), he lives on Bainbridge Island, WA.