April Wright, MLS
Outreach Librarian, Environmental Health & Justice, Region 1
April Wright is Outreach Librarian in Environmental Health & Justice with the Network of the National Library of Medicine (NNLM). She joined NNLM in 2018 as an NNLM/All of Us Community Engagement Coordinator. April earned her BA in English from Morgan State University and MLS from The Catholic University of America. She has worked both in and on behalf of a variety of libraries during the course of her career. Her background includes public libraries management, programming and outreach, and grants management. She is interested in environmental justice and addressing social determinants of health through citizen/community science and community-engaged research.
Classes I Teach
| Event Title | Summary |
|---|---|
| Black Maternal Health Week Journal Discussion | Join us for this live discussion as we explore the article Environmental Factors Involved in Maternal Morbidity and Mortality. This live discussion will explore the following questions: What are some ways Black women and other birthing people who are not researchers contribute to this research? What are some ways this research can be shared and lead to actionable results among those most affected by disparities? Where do libraries fit into this work? |
| ClinicalTrials.gov for Librarians | ClinicalTrials.gov is the openly available federal registry and results database of publicly and privately funded clinical studies conducted in the United States and around the world. ClinicalTrials.gov is a vital resource for researchers, healthcare providers, and health sciences librarians who wish to consult the entire body of evidence on any particular topic. This 1 credit training covers the materials in a survey format with polls and exercises. |
| Environmental Health and Justice: a brief primer | This self-paced online class provides an introduction to environmental health and environmental justice and presents 3 resources you can use to find data and statistics about environmental health disparities in your community. |
| Finding Environmental Health Information in PubMed | Focused on the relationship between human health and the environment, environmental health helps us understand how the air, water, food, substances, and places we interact with can affect our health. In this webinar, participants will learn how to use PubMed to find environmental health research. An overview of the topic and strategies for identifying useful resources will be provided, as well as a demonstration of an environmental health-related literature search. |
| Inclusive Disaster Planning: Considering the Needs of People with Disabilities | Disasters befall every community at one time or another. Please join our 3 panelists while they discuss the importance of and offer guidance on disaster planning and management with the needs in mind of people with disabilities. |
| Libraries as Hubs for Citizen Science: Partnering with Academia to Improve the Health of Communities | Radon is a leading cause of lung cancer. Many living in rural communities lack access to home radon testing and adequate and affordable mitigation. Community-academic partnerships provide opportunities to achieve health equity by drawing upon respective strengths, expertise, and local knowledge. Logan County (Kentucky) Public Library will discuss its innovative partnership with the University of Kentucky to engage community members as citizen scientists and develop a novel library lending program for digital home radon detectors to reduce barriers to home radon testing in four rural counties (R01ES030380). Preliminary data evaluating the program will be presented. |
| OurSpace World: Sowing Health, Building Community | Data on health disparities point to a great need for improved access to health information in Black communities. As they are learning about subjects like food, health, and the environment, Black, Indigenous and other People of Color (BIPOC) youth need to see themselves in the books they read (termed curricular "mirrors"). In 2021, OurSpace World, Inc. received a Health Information Outreach Award from NNLM Region 1 Mirror Resources for Health, Food, and Environment to address this need. This webinar/session will provide an opportunity to learn about this project, the online repository produced, the intersecting challenges the team sought to address, and ongoing related initiatives at the local, regional and national levels. The project's goals were to use NLM resources (e.g., MEDLINE, MedlinePlus, PubMed) to create a public online repository of resources containing materials representative of Black/African and Latinx youth of color, centered around agriculture, farming, food, health, environmental health and environmental justice. |
| PBC Living Library Project | The PBC Living Library at Phoenix Biomedical Campus Library, Northern Arizona University, is a program that raises awareness to medical harm through oral storytelling. Learn how the PBC Living Library was conceived and tips for developing your own living library in this 90 minute webinar. |
| Queering Environmental Justice | We hope you will join us on Tuesday June 14, 2022, 2pm ET for another Chat & Brew. In observance of Pride month, NNLM Region 1, UMB HSHSL DEI Committee and the MAC MLA Diversity and Inclusion Committee have come together again to offer another journal club where we will discuss Queering Environmental Justice: Unequal Environmental Health Burden on the LGBTQ+ Community. This article highlights that there is insufficient research on health disparities experienced by LGBTQ+ individuals due to environmental exposures and disasters. The authors provide linkages between health outcomes, social determinants of health and environmental exposures taking into account intersectionality within LGBTQ+ communities and provide recommendations for collecting more robust data so more comprehensive research may be done. Goldsmith L, Bell ML. Queering Environmental Justice: Unequal Environmental Health Burden on the LGBTQ+ Community. American Journal of Public Health. 2022;112(1):79-87. doi:10.2105/ajph.2021.306406 At the end of this discussion, participants will be able to: • Define environmental justice (EJ) • Discuss ways libraries/librarians can contribute to environmental health & justice research The questions Where do you see libraries and/or librarians contributing to any of the recommendations proposed by the authors? What is the role of academic/medical librarians (MLA? Individual institutions? Librarians as a profession?) in addressing gaps in environmental research and data especially as it pertains to specific populations? We look forward to seeing you! |
| The Poetry of Pediatrics: Health Humanities in Practice | What are the health humanities? How can the practice of narrative medicine inform the practice of pediatrics? In this webinar, Dr. Irène Mathieu, a poet, physician scientist, and Assistant Professor of Pediatrics will discuss how these threads of her career inform and complement one another. |
| Transgender Visibility Day Journal Discussion | This journal discussion is in observance of Trans Visibility Day which occurs on March 31, 2023. |
| Your Environment. Your Health: Free Information Resources from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences | This webinar will introduce you to the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) and the wealth of free resources available to you. NIEHS has several tools that will help increase your awareness of knowledge of environmental health sciences including new literature portals on climate change and human health, PFAS and related chemicals, and disaster research response. You will also learn how the NIEHS Library can be your partner in providing environmental health information. |
Contact Information
410-706-7409