LOUISVILLE – Eighteen months from now, Kentucky researchers hope to know how to diagnose neighborhoods in much the same way doctors diagnose illnesses in the human body.?

A Robert Wood Johnson Foundation grant of $500,000 will fund a Louisville-based neighborhood study, featuring researchers from Simmons College of Kentucky and the University of Louisville, leaders from the institutions announced Friday. Experts from Rice University and the University of Kentucky will also contribute.?

The year-and-a-half-long study seeks to understand what neighborhood factors drive health inequities. Researchers are particularly interested in closing the nearly 13-year life expectancy gap between people living in predominantly Black neighborhoods in Louisville compared with those in white neighborhoods.?

Kevin Cosby, the president of Simmons, said it’s important to keep in mind that deficits don’t reflect people.?

“All of the unfortunate disparities that (were) created through structural and systemic racism (have) nothing to do with deficits in Black people,” he said. They have “everything to do with deficits of opportunity that (have) never been extended to the Black community.”?

What will researchers look at??

Researchers will, among other things, survey people door-to-door in Louisville’s Crescent Hill and California neighborhoods. They’ll also look at what environmental factors impact health outcomes.?

The surveys should begin in September, led by Nancy Seay, the chair of the James R. L. Diggs Department of Sociology at Simmons. Students in her class, Participatory Action Research, will help with the surveys. (University of Louisville students can also take the class).?

University of Louisville President Kim Schatzel said Friday “we know that health just doesn’t happen in hospitals or doctors offices.”?

“The ZIP code that you live in has a tremendous impact in terms of your chronic disease, your ability to be able to progress through school,” and more, Schatzel said.?

Ted Smith, the? director of the UofL Center for Healthy Air, Water and Soil in the Envirome Institute, will help Seay lead the research.?

The research must answer why certain disparities exist, and how the city can close those gaps. ZIP codes, researchers said, shouldn’t determine life expectancy and other health outcomes.?

“We think that in addition to diagnosing and treating people, we could be diagnosing and treating places,” Smith said Friday.?

At the end of the study, researchers want to better understand what makes a “universal basic neighborhood” (UBN), in which residents can thrive. They also want to have a playbook that helps neighborhoods define their needs and ways to address them.?

“I don’t think that there’s such a thing as a ‘good’ or a ‘bad’ neighborhood,” Seay said. “But I think there are differences in access to resources … and that’s what makes neighborhoods different.”?