Students

It was a sweltering hot summer day, but that didn’t stop kids from running around at a new traffic-free Play Street in East Harlem, playing games like hopscotch, soccer, and dodge ball. They were just happy to have a place to play.

The New York City Strategic Alliance for Health (NYC SAfH), a community initiative funded by the Centers for Disease Control, hopes to make this a more common scene in Harlem and the South Bronx as it works with community partners to create more safe open play spaces for kids in under-resourced city neighborhoods through the Play Streets project.

Jennifer So Godzeno, a dual-degree student in the Sociomedical Science program at the Mailman School and the Urban Planning Program at Columbia’s School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation has had the good fortune of interning with NYC SAfH for her required practicum.

NYC SAfH is housed in the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene’s District Public Health Offices (DPHOs) in Harlem and the South Bronx. DPHOs target neighborhoods in the city that have the greatest health disparities to enact ono-the-ground health interventions locally. The goal of NYC SAfH is to "to improve the environments, systems and policies that influence physical activity, nutrition, and tobacco use within schools and the broader community," which includes SAfH's project to to expand Play Streets.

For now NYC SAfH and advocacy organization Transportation Alternatives are partnered with Harvest Home Farmer’s Market to use a space the market doesn’t need as a playground that local daycare and day camps can access. Godzeno explains, “Many kids in the area come from single parent families or households where both parents work, so kids are sent to day camps during the summer. However, the day camps are often under-resourced and lack space where kids can go outside and be active.”

Originally planning a career in medicine, Godzeno became increasingly intrigued by the public health field as an undergraduate at Amherst College. Her upbringing and Chinese background encouraged her interest in underserved and immigrant communities.

This passion only deepened when, after college, she went to work as a Clinical Research Associate at Seattle Children’s Hospital Research Institute. There she studied different characteristics of neighborhoods that kids lived in, such as whether they were “walk-able” or included playgrounds and how this might contribute to obesity in local children.

She explains that through this project she discovered urban planning, “I've always been fascinated by how cities work, though was unable to put a name to the exact interest, but then I found the whole field of designing cities was something I could do as a career.” Making sure that a public space is a “neighborhood asset” is incredibly important, she says.

It seems as if there is no better project for Ms. Godzeno’s practicum. Her main responsibility has been in community outreach: finding community groups to provide activities and recruiting local nurseries and day camps to bring kids to the Play Streets in East Harlem and the South Bronx. Her supervisor, Javier, Director for NYC SAfH, (pictured left with Godzeno) says he has given her “free reign” and raves about her success in finding important partners such as the local YMCA, New York Road Runners, Play Rugby USA and Harlem RBI (Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities).

Ms. Godzeno says that the work is rewarding. “I like that I’m doing things on the ground and get to see the impact on the kids and the neighborhoods.”

She is so passionate about the project that she hopes to continue her practicum into the fall, where she will be able to focus more on policy strategies to expand Play Streets. NYC SAfH plans to seek city funding for the project and find a way to get street permits more easily. “We want to make it easier for this kind of thing to happen,” Ms. Godzeno explains.