As a young clinical audiologist, Henry Louis Taylor Jr. found that the socioeconomic realities of many of his Black patients affected his ability to help them. To truly serve his community, he realized, he would need to understand the root causes of their circumstances. So he quit his job and went back to school to study urban history. Now, as the founding director of UB’s Center for Urban Studies at the School of Architecture and Planning, and associate director of the Community Health Equity Research Institute at the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, Taylor is on a mission to reverse the historic inequities that have created such a wide gap between Black lives and white lives. In this episode, the self-proclaimed activist scholar talks to host Ellen Goldbaum about his latest and most ambitious effort: The East Side Neighborhood Transformation Project.

Credits: 
 
Host: Ellen Golbaum
Guest: Henry Louis Taylor Jr.
Writer/Producer: Laura Silverman
Production and editing by UB Video Production Group 

Coming this fall: Driven to Discover is taking a break for the summer. We’ll be back in early September with a new slate of UB innovators discussing what sparked their passion for their subject and what makes their research meaningful for the world at large.