Season 2, Episode 2 | A Conversation with Team North Port St. Joe (Cohort 7)

To kick off our Season 2, we had a wonderful conversation with Team North Port St. Joe of Florida, from our last Cohort 7. Our guests are Dannie E. Bolden, Dr. Kwame N. Owusu-Daaku, and Dr. Christian Wells, who launched their ambitious and amazing project “Using Transformative Scenario Planning to Address Structural Racism in Health in North Port St. Joe, Florida.”

Guests:

Dannie E. Bolden is the managing partner of Bolden and Associates Consulting Services LLC, a minority and veteran-owned business, with offices in Port St. Joe, Florida, and Columbus, Georgia. His company specializes in nonprofit startups, affordable housing construction, and community redevelopment. He is a community organizer and committed advocate for poor and disenfranchised individuals and families. For the last 20 years, he has engaged his skills and expertise to address head-on the struggles facing African Americans in North Port St. Joe. In doing so, he has engaged exceptional business associates, collaborative partners who are subject-matter experts, and many residents who are committed to bring about positive change in their community.

Dr. Kwame N. Owusu-Daaku, an Associate Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of West Florida, is a qualitative researcher with teaching and research interests in human geography, planning, international development, sustainability, community engagement, and civic scholarship. His research focuses on the impacts of climate change and pollution on different groups in various (rural, urban, local, international) communities and the efforts of these groups to build resilience to these impacts. The goal of his scholarship is to pair this focus on unequal impacts with community-led strategies to build awareness of — and inspire action to improve — socio-environmental problems.

Dr. Christian Wells is professor of anthropology and director of the Center for Brownfields Research & Redevelopment at the University of South Florida, where he served previously as the institution’s chief sustainability officer. Dr. Wells is an environmental anthropologist with a diverse portfolio of research projects aimed at improving human and environmental health outcomes of re/development efforts in underserved communities. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a past president of the Florida Brownfields Association. He recently received the 2025 Comitas Award for Social Innovation and Public Engagement from the Society for Applied Anthropology.

Mentioned:

* IRL LinkedIn Page

* IRL Promising Practices Podcast Page

* Dannie E Bolden:

https://www.northportstjoecdc.org

* Dr. Kwame N. Owusu-Daaku: https://uwf.edu/hmcse/departments/earth-and-environmental-sciences/faculty/dr-kwame-owusu-daaku.html

* Dr. Christian Wells: https://www.usf.edu/arts-sciences/departments/anthropology/people/e-christian-wells.aspx

* Team North Port St. Joe’s IRL Project overview: https://irleaders.org/team/using-transformative-scenario-planning-to-address-structural-racism-in-health-in-north-port-st-joe-florida

* Transformative Scenarios Planning overview: https://reospartners.com/transformative-scenarios

* Port St. Joe Health Equity Futures Transformative Scenarios: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sNpEfntmQexA4o-5LwXcORpTQNQS7g6C_JP-1H76BLc/edit?usp=sharing

* Media:

* https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIsyl2r_KOvLZVbqgClAZ9XhE_7EEkdfm&si=SUgkUeMmh_kxOgZC

* https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iG5QdYAOGiGuFtE1xFHB-ex1ahzfK8Jw/view

* News:

* https://uwfvoyager.com/4223/features/contamination-without-representation/

* https://www.eenews.net/articles/gas-project-ej-concerns-collide-in-the-florida-panhandle/

* https://insideclimatenews.org/news/07052023/florida-port-st-joe-lng/

Thoughts? Suggestions? Email us at researchleaders@umn.edu

You can find show notes, transcripts, and more episodes of “Promising Practices for Health Equity” at Promising Practices for Health Equity Podcast: Introduction - Interdisciplinary Research Leaders.

This episode of “Promising Practices for Health Equity” was produced by Studio Americana, and prepared by Cody Cotton, Mandy LaBreche, Krystal Lee, and J. Robin Moon of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Interdisciplinary Research Leaders Podcast Team.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit irlpodcast.substack.com