Elle Rich, 2018 Health Leader
Title: Junior Food Policy Analyst
Organization: Healthcare Without Harm
Location: Denver, CO
As a dual master’s candidate of Urban and Regional Planning and Public Health at the University of Colorado- Denver, Elle Rich seeks to engage a global discourse on building healthy, healing, and sustainable environments in both the urban and healthcare context. Her mission is to improve human health by designing and developing ecologically responsive and equitable urban spaces that incorporate place-based solutions which seek to enhance public health while maintaining a sense of cultural continuity.
Elle has immersed herself in the intersectionality of urban studies and human health in the US and abroad in both high and low- income settings, including public health, race, and human rights in Brazil, municipal responses to the German refugee crisis, and environmental sustainability in Berlin. In Colorado, Elle worked with the Colorado Center of Sustainable Urbanism in conjunction with the Colorado Health Foundation on the Creating Healthy Places through Transformational Education and Design project. She was honored to work in disaster recovery following the devastating floods of 2013 in Boulder County while concurrently researching NIMBY-sim and affordable housing in the same communities. More recently, Elle has been forwarding sustainable food practices and climate-friendly healthcare with Health Care Without Harm-Europe, where she completed her Practicum for her Master’s in Public Health in Brussels. Elle received an Honors Scholarship from Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, earning her B.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies with concentrations in the Psychology of Health and Healing with Peace Studies.