A Map of My Own
Misha Ansari
1st Year MPH Health Behavior, Health Equity Student
The San Antonio River cuts through the city, I notice as I examine the map on my laptop screen. The pictures that pop up on the side of the map depict the riverwalk - colored in a lush green that is only now slowly beginning to spring out of the cold soil here in Michigan this April. Before joining Public Health in Action Support Team’s San Antonio trip, I had never considered what a city in Texas might feature. I had no idea that San Antonio had a riverwalk, or even a river in the city. My few associations with San Antonio were in regard to the Alamo - “never forget” - and Tex-Mex cuisine. In preparation for this trip, my Eastside group is putting together a map to figure out what to see on our Windshield Tour through the East side of Bexar County.
My excitement in visiting a new place is mingled with nerves at the thought of supporting public health efforts so far from what is familiar to me in Michigan. When I had conducted a Windshield Tour in undergrad, it was near my home city in Dearborn. Classmates and I examined the structures surrounding a local elementary school - these included an automobile factory, a railroad carrying car parts, and a semi-truck parking facility all within a three-mile radius of the school. My familiarity with Dearborn and metro Detroit history served me to understand the historical and contextual background of why this was. I knew how Dearborn was the factory hub of the automotive industry, and how many vulnerable populations moved to these areas due to job access, and how this is causing disproportionate health issues due to their proximity to environmental hazards and neighborhood disinvestment. I’ve grown up knowing the history of these streets, seeing my community and I being impacted by these disparities. This allowed me to know about the nuance and familiarity of each city corner - knowing where the Yemeni community center is, how the ACCESS health services clinic is around the corner after the senior center, the way that the kids walk under a railroad pass to get to the nearby park.
These details are central to the way that the built environment impacts the health and wellbeing of each person in this community every day. When I think about San Antonio, I think about how many city corners, parks, and central places there are that, as outsiders to the community, we may not be exposed to. Because of this, I am glad for our community partners. However, a part of me wants to be thorough in my understanding of this space that it’s already familiar to me when I make it there. For now, I will keep staring at this map on my laptop - knowing that, when I leave San Antonio, I’ll leave it with a map of my own.
