Nisha Botchwey

A.B., Harvard University;
M.C.P, Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania

Assistant Professor

Dr. Botchwey specializes in community development and neighborhood planning with emphasis on local religious and secular institutions and the promotion of public health. She joined the faculty of the Department of Urban and Environmental Planning in the fall of 2003, and teaches undergraduate and graduate neighborhood planning workshops. She also developed Healthy Communities, a graduate seminar exploring the connections between the built environment and health. Dr. Botchwey also co-organized the Department’s 2004 Spring Symposium, “Healthy Communities, Healthy People: Exploring the Relationship between Public Health and the Built Environment.” Her work on religious and secular nonprofits provides empirical documentation of the characteristics and community revitalization contributions of these neighborhood-based organizations. It also identifies health promoting opportunities that exist through these venues for people with type-2 diabetes.

Dr. Botchwey’s published work includes “The Religious Sector’s Presence in Local Community Development” (Journal of Planning Education and Research, forthcoming), “Using Culturally Competent Strategies to Improve Traffic Safety in the Black Community” (Annals of Emergency Medicine, 2004), “Born Again Bodies” (Journal of the National Medical Association, 2005), and numerous reports. She is also a contributor to the 2005 edition of the Encyclopedia of American Urban History (2007) with two entries, “Public Health” and “Social Welfare.”

Dr. Botchwey’s primary research focus is on developing methodologies for religious institutions to revitalize unhealthy communities, places where the physical and social environments do not enable people to maximize their lives. She discusses this emphasis as faculty for the Centers for Disease Control May 2007 National Broadcast of Public Health Grand Round entitled "Healthy Places Leading to Healthy People: Community Engagement Improves Health for All" (http://www.publichealthgrandrounds.unc.edu/places/index.htm).

Her funded research on public health and the built environment involves two multidisciplinary collaborations with scholars from the Schools of Medicine and Nursing, and with support from the National Institutes of Health and other public and private sources.

Dr. Botchwey is an Annie E. Casey Foundation Junior Scholar, and National Institutes of Health National Center on Minority Health Disparities Scholar.