On February 28th, our colleague Clara Zhao presented her well-researched graduate thesis at APT Northeast's Annual Symposium. Entitled "From the World to Henry Street: Tracing the Hidden Narrative of Women in Public Health Through Spatial Mapping," the presentation centered around how these individual women navigated the city through its obstacles and forged close relationships with the people they served.
Since the founding of the Henry Street Settlement in 1903, the nurses provided care and medical services to residents across the immigrant and lower-income neighborhoods in NYC. Although they were from vastly diverse social backgrounds and cultures, historical research revealed their aspirations to achieve formal medical education, which contributed to the increased diversity of the Settlement’s and the City’s public health professionals.
Clara's research focused on the tangible and social environments the nurses inhabited and introduces the methodology exploration of “narrative-guided spatial mapping” to graphically interpret archival data and construct narrative themes to trace their life journeys. By mapping the individual nurses’ experiences back onto the urban landscape, Clara's thesis seeks to help recognize and preserve their claim as part of the historical heritage of both the Henry Street Settlement and the City of New York.
