About the Lab

Mission Statement

The Health, Education, and Rural Empowerment (HEaRE, pronounced “here”) Laboratory promotes knowledge about the unique experiences of health disparities populations and underrepresented people in rural, remote and geographically diverse areas of the United States and the world. To this end, we explore interactions and/or relationships between identity, location and health. We advocate for underrepresented populations based on our findings.

Goals and Objectives

To facilitate research with an for underrepresented populations, especially in rural, remote or geographically unique areas of the United States and globally.
To inform training and education aimed at promoting a clearer understanding of underrepresented populations and disparate health concerns, especially in rural or remote areas of the US.
To develop theory that will guide future research and practice with underrepresented populations.
To inform best practices and promote affirmative and evidence-based practice in work with underrepresented clients who face health disparities.
Advocate with underrepresented populations using research and knowledge that is directly drawn from and informed by those populations.

Guiding Principles

Our lab is guided by humility, awareness, and intention as researchers. Our approach is holistic, humanistic and feminist and focuses on empowering underrepresented people and communities. We engage in reflexivity; we explore our own positions of privilege as we promote the understanding of intersectionality, and we recognize our power in knowledge creation. We approach our research in an interdisciplinary manner and hold ourselves accountable to the communities and larger systems in which we function. Our research is tied to the greater goals of addressing '-isms' and other forms of exclusion. Thus, our work includes a critical consciousness perspective of our own findings and of existing research findings and models.