Upcoming Dates and Topics for Swetland Center Virtual Seminar Series:
Join us for the Swetland Seminar Series!
Partnering for Produce Prescription Expansion within the Northeast Ohio Quality
Improvement Hub: Lessons from the Produce Path Coupon Program
This panel presentation will focus on implementation and impact of a technology-enhanced produce prescription (PRx) program offered at 13 primary care sites in Northeast Ohio in 2025. The program provided $100 coupons to 431 Medicaid/Medicare patients for fruit and vegetable purchases at 7 farmers markets in Northeast Ohio. Learn more about:
Partnership strategies to engage clinical practices, community educators, and farmers market managers in PRx implementation.
Implementation processes including integration of the Produce Path app in PRx.
Program impacts to inform future expansion of PRx in Cuyahoga County.
Date: Tuesday, January 20, 2026
Time: 9:00 - 10:00am (Eastern)
Location: Virtual
Panelists:
- Mamie Priestly
- Owusua Yamoah, PhD, MA
- Shari Bolen, MD, MPH
- Traci Singree
Moderated by Darcy Freedman, PhD, MPH
Join us for the Swetland Seminar Series!
Housing and Infant Health: Targeted Investment and Meaningful Engagement (TIME) Study
The probability that a child does not live to celebrate their first birthday, the infant mortality rate (IMR), is widely accepted as an indicator of overall well-being of a population. The racial disparities in IMR are a long-standing problem, both nationally and locally in Central Ohio. IMR disparities are often place-based and are the result of policies and practices that have created and maintained the disparate opportunity landscape. Beginning to undo the effects of these policies on disparities in IMR and health outcomes at the community level will require: (1) understanding the ways that the policies have been experienced by women, (2) identifying avenues for targeted investment designed to create meaningful change, and (3) making financial commitments to improve outcomes. The Targeted Investment and Meaning Engagement (TIME) Study tells the story of Columbus, Ohio’s Linden neighborhood, a historically disinvested community that has been devastated by decades of disparate policies and high IMR. This mixed-methods study uses information gathered through an extensive policy inventory of the neighborhood, qualitative interviews with Black women, and engagement with residents to understand the “why” of the neighborhood deprivation that imperils birth outcomes for Black infants to tailor future investment strategies.
Date: Tuesday, February 17, 2026
Time: 9:00 - 10:00am (Eastern)
Location: Virtual
Speakers:
- Deena J. Chisolm, PhD
- Nationwide Foundation Endowed Chair in Health Equity Research
- Vice President of Health Services Research
- Director, Center for Child Health Equity and Outcomes Research, Abigail Wexner Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital
- Professor of Pediatrics, The Ohio State University College of Medicine
- Kierra S. Barnett, PhD, MPH
- Senior Research Scientist
- Center for Child Health Equity and Outcomes Research, Abigail Wexner Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital
Join us for the Swetland Seminar Series!
Gaining Consensus on Metrics of Nutrition Equity for Urban Food Systems
Commonly used measures for assessing local food systems, such as food security or healthy food access, do not provide guidance into the series of actions involved in transforming these outcomes. To address this gap, our community action research project studied implementation mechanisms (i.e., series of linked actions) involved in community-led efforts to transform urban food systems to achieve goals of nutrition equity. Our data were derived from the perceptions of 18 community leaders identifying as Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) planning to implement food justice initiatives in Cleveland, Ohio, United States.
To begin operationalizing these implementation mechanisms, we conducted an ExpertLens panel, bringing together about 60 community-based, organizational, and systems-level champions for nutrition equity in urban food systems. Through an iterative, 3 round process, a national sample of Experts rated and commented on the relevance to nutrition equity and feasibility to measure the process or outcomes of 15 implementation mechanisms derived from the aforementioned 18 community-food justice leaders. We will report our findings from this study from Fall 2025 and discuss next steps needed to advance this work.
Learn more here: https://case.edu/swetland/research/nourishing-power-network/consensus-building-metrics-nutrition-equity
Date: Wednesday, March 18, 2026
Time: 12:00 - 1:00 PM (Eastern)
Location: Virtual
Speakers:
- Darcy Freedman, PhD, MPH
- Director, Mary Ann Swetland Center for Environmental Health
- Case Western Reserve University
- Owusua Yamoah, PhD, MA
- Research Scientist, Mary Ann Swetland Center for Environmental Health
- Case Western Reserve University