New Haven Independent

The three young people carrying a clipboard, hand-held computer monitor and watchful eyes were on their first day of a six-week hunt. Their territory: the West River neighborhood. Around 2:15 p.m. they were stationed at the triangular park that stands where Chapel Street branches off to Derby Avenue.

They were engaged in “asset mapping.”

Green space? Check.

Open all the time? Check.

Can you smoke here? Yes. But all things considered, including a sign listing times of neighborhood park beautification times — made this one healthful corner.

The trio — high-schoolers Tania Rivera and Jonathan Gibson (left and center in top photo) and Bethany Davidson (at right), a Yale Divinity School and UConn student — recorded the info on a hand-held GPS-equipped “mobile mapper” created by a local company called Matrix Public Health Solutions. Then they proceeded down Chapel Street, on their way to … a liquor store.

Hours earlier, they and other teams from New Haven’s Youth@Work summer program began the project with a press event in City Hall. Their mission: to help create a computerized look at what’s good for you, and what isn’t, in six city neighborhoods.

The teams of students, clad in orange “We Care” T-shirts, will check out fast food restaurants, parks, liquor and convenience stores in West River, Fair Haven, the Hill, Newhallville, and West Rock. They’re recording what’s for sale, what messages are being broadcast, both positive and negative.

The long-term goal is to help the city map out a strategy to tackle “health inequities” — diseases like diabetes, obesity, and heart disease — that hit New Haven’s neighborhoods as well as the 66 percent of the city population that’s nonwhite.

The summer search is part of an international campaign called the Community Interventions for Health. Besides New Haven, cities in Mexico, India, China and Great Britain are involved.

It’s also part of a new $300,000 city government effort to tackle racial disparities in health care by examining root causes, like poverty, education, and housing, said New Haven’s health chief, Bill Quinn. “It’s the most exciting thing I’ve done in 20 years,” Quinn said at a City Hall launch event for the campaign Monday.

Heading up the summer project are a Yale group called CARE (Community Alliance for Research and Engagement) and the Color of Words, a local not-for-profit that teaches teens video. Other groups involved in supporting the project include Fair Haven and Hill Community Health Centers, Data Haven, New Haven Family Alliance, and the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven.

The teams of monitors will focus on three activities promoted or hindered by the sites they encounter in the neighborhoods: eating, smoking, and exercise. The walk in West River revealed a two-part educational mission: the eventual goal of producing data to drive public policy; and immediate lessons along the way for teens taking part.

Since two of the crew are underage, the West River trio asset-mapped from the sidewalk, not inside, when they arrived at Norton Package Store.

Davidson pointed to a cigarette poster.

“It’s trying to tell us,” she said, “that USA Gold cigarettes are full of flavor.”

Then the group took notice of a Michelob Ultra “low carb” sign. “Is that healthy or unhealthy?” one asset-mapper asked. The reason for the question: while alcohol’s not good for you, diet versions of products help people lose weight.

More of those nuanced results showed up across the street when Jonathan Gibson brought his clipboard and checklist into Helen’s Grocery.

He encountered rows of Goya beans. That’s good. High-fat quarter-pound beef patties and frozen french fries. Not good.

“As soon as you walk in, they have 15 bottles of soda!” he noticed. Not so good. Some of it’s diet. That helps.

Tobacco? Yes, cigarettes for sale behind the counter. Nicotine replacement products? Not here; more likely in a pharmacy.

Back outside on the Chapel Street sidewalk, Gibson relayed the skinny to Tania Rivera, who recorded it on the monitor. One more stop completed, more to go that afternoon, and six weeks onward.