Staff Profile Isabel Cuervo

Fostering Health and Safety for Immigrant Laborers

With her PhD in environmental psychology from the CUNY Graduate Center, Isabel Cuervo is thoroughly grounded in theory. But her dissertation research with residents of government-subsidized “social housing” in Bogota, Colombia, put her on a path to the work she most loves: interacting with marginalized communities to learn their needs and “give voice to people not usually at the table.”

This passion stems from personal experience. Growing up in Sunnyside, Queens, Cuervo attended Townsend Harris High School and received scholarships for Barnard College (transferring there from Tufts University because she “missed New York too much”). Her mother, a native of Colombia, was a nanny and housekeeper in Manhattan. “When my mother lost her job, we almost lost our apartment,” says Cuervo, recalling that frightening time during her college years that inspired her to pursue community-engaged research.

A spirit of empathy permeates her work as a senior research associate at the Barry Commoner Center for Health and the Environment, where Cuervo is on a team dedicated to improving the health of immigrant working populations in New York City. Reporting to project director Sherry Baron, MD under Center director Dr. Steven Markowitz, Cuervo writes grants and collaborates on community-engaged research projects with immigrant-oriented nonprofits.

Until recently, the team has been focusing on Latino day laborers doing disaster cleanup work or other low-wage jobs that may expose them to health hazards. Cuervo’s Spanish serves her well in communicating with this population–collecting research data via interviews and focus groups and creating informative flyers, leaflets and curricular materials.

Cuervo’s previous employment was valuable preparation for her QC career. “I had to earn an income while getting my PhD, so it took me a long time—ten years. But the experience was useful because of the populations I worked with,” she says. At the Citizens Committee for New York City, Cuervo interacted with food banks and other organizations trying to alleviate hunger. As the parent outreach coordinator for CUNY Middle Grades Initiative, a GEAR UP program, she conducted workshops in English and Spanish and assisted parents of students in that college readiness preparation program. For the Public Policy Lab, she conducted interviews in English and Spanish to explain the process of applying for affordable housing.

Before coming to the Barry Commoner Center, Cuervo taught widely. She was a “Science Now Fellow” with the Center for Advanced Study in Education. Through this CUNY Graduate Center project, Cuervo designed and taught a science research course for two years, reaching 115 students in an under-resourced New York City public high school. In addition, she was guest faculty at Sarah Lawrence College; a Writing Across the Curriculum Fellow at QC; and an adjunct at City College, La Guardia, John Jay, and Brooklyn College.

“Partnership” is the guiding word for her outreach targeting at-risk laborers. “We work closely with community organizations every step of the way, from designing research to carrying it out and ultimately, developing a program to help the specific problem,” Cuervo says. Make the Road New York, a large worker-based organization, is a prominent collaborator. On November 28, 2017, the Center received a $2.8 million grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, part of the NIH, to work with Make the Road New York and Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai to document the exposure of cleaning chemicals among Latina domestic workers.

Building worker-oriented organizations’ capacity for disaster preparation is a major goal, accomplished by providing occupational health and safety training. For example, after Hurricane Sandy, clean-up workers received crucial instruction such as the need for and proper use of personal protective gear, as well as labor rights information. “We also helped connect the organizations with leaders of relevant New York City agencies such as the Department of Emergency Management and the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Bringing them together and establishing trust that may not have existed because of language and cultural barriers has led to increased funding for some of these groups,” says Cuervo, who meets with the new grantees monthly.

In New York City, Cuervo has relationships with worker centers in Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island and with the Labor Institute, a partner organization of the United Steelworkers. Collaborations are ongoing in New Jersey, Westchester, and Hempstead, Long Island.

This year the Annie E. Casey Foundation named Cuervo a “member-scholar” of the 2017-2018 Leaders in Equitable Evaluation and Diversity (LEEAD) cohort. Increasing diversity in the field of research and evaluation “makes for better science and social innovation,” according to the foundation. And so Cuervo has been receiving educational support and training to strengthen her skills in conducting culturally sensitive evaluation of research projects, a role she currently plays for the Commoner Center’s own projects.

“I love that I’m doing fieldwork that’s always grounded in people’s lives and respects and understands communities,” she says. “I’m using my research skills to advance their agendas and help them arrive at workable solutions.” This participatory collaboration with others is a time-consuming process, but in the end, Cuervo says, “it’s impactful and thrilling.”