Natural Solution: Nurturing Tree Canopies

Data from the U.S. Census Bureau finds nearly one in four Americans are vulnerable to extreme heat. Many of them are in urban areas where there isn’t enough shade. Disturbingly, we’re losing trees to commercial development, weather events and invasive insect species like the emerald ash borer. Cities are recognizing the need to plant more trees and are implementing urban forestry plans. This life-sustaining strategy is already proving successful in the health of its residents. Will the money and political will be there to expand it?

Interview guests: Jennifer Spieser, President and CEO Cincinnati Parks Foundation; Joe Boggs, Assistant Professor, OSU Entomology and OSU Extension, Hamilton County; Bryan Urban, City of Dayton Operations Supervisor Street Maintenance; Maddie Hall, CEO Living Carbon; Rahul Mishra, Chief Product Officer Living Carbon; Steve Fleegal, Executive Director Appalachia Ohio Alliance; Jaeydah Edwards, interim director Groundwork Ohio River Valley; Marisha Davis, member Equity Advisory Group; Dr. Aruni Bhatnagar, principal investigator Green Heart Project. 

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Transcript

Ann Thompson:

Trees are essential. They make the scorching sun more bearable. They capture carbon. They breathe life into communities.

Jaeydah Edwards:

Green is good. Having more trees means that you're cleaning up the air. This community where there are a lot of buildings and there's not as much trees, it can be hotter, but when you have these trees out there, they're providing shade. So if somebody needs to rest under a tree, they can cool off.

Ann Thompson:

But for the last two decades, hundreds of millions of ash trees east of the Mississippi have come under attack and the emerald ash borer Beetle is making its way west.

Joe Boggs:

It discovered, of course, that there were no defenses that we were aware of at the time. And so ash was just on the dinner plate for this non-native beetle.

Ann Thompson:

The emerald ash borer, tornadoes, fires, and commercial development have left the US in need of more trees, especially cities. Dayton is creating a roadmap.

Bryan Urban:

Part of it will be helping find good planting locations, getting a good future planting plan.

Ann Thompson:

Cincinnati has a plan with important goals.

Jennifer Spieser:

We're just going to keep doing this work and creating opportunities for people to certainly learn the history of their park, but learn what's available to them and their communities.

Ann Thompson:

One national study projected the current pattern of increasing urban land and decreasing urban tree cover will require the US to plant 26 million new trees by 2060. It sounds easy enough planting more trees. How much does this solution cost? How long do the trees live and what kind of a difference does having a tree canopy make for a neighborhood? Let's get into it. This is Brick by Brick, solutions for a thriving community.

Ame Clase:

Brick by Brick is made possible thanks to leading support from Greater Cincinnati Foundation, AES Foundation and George and Margaret McLane Foundation, with additional major support from Laurie    Johnston, The Robert & Adelle Schiff Family Foundation, Murray and Agnes Seasongood Good Government Foundation and more. Thank you

Ann Thompson:

Hello and welcome to Brick by Brick, where we're highlighting solutions for a thriving community in Southwest Ohio. I'm your host, Ann Thompson. We need trees for a lot of reasons. An obvious one is oxygen. Trees and land-based plants provide 28% of the air we breathe. The rest comes from plants in the ocean. In fact, an acre of trees produces enough oxygen for 18 people to breathe a year. Trees also combat heat islands, urban areas where there isn't enough shade. This can come from replacing the natural landscape with huge amounts of blacktop and concrete, which can heat up quickly. According to 2023 figures from the US Census Bureau, on four people are vulnerable to extreme heat exposure. This measurement doesn't identify the hottest places. Instead, it says populations with overcrowded housing, poverty, and no car can be at risk if they are faced with extreme heat.

So those are vulnerable populations. The Cincinnati Enquirer studied census data and found the following Cincinnati neighborhoods to be most at risk when temperatures rise. Winton Hills, the Villages at Roll Hill, South Cumminsville, Millville, Lower Price Hill, and Avondale. Besides combating heat islands, trees take carbon out of the air. Forest resources reports Ohio forests, urban trees, and harvested wood products remove 3% of all CO2 emissions in the state. But disturbingly, we're losing trees to commercial development, weather events, and invasive insect species like the emerald ash borer. More than two decades ago, it traveled from Asia to Michigan in wood pallets leaving hundreds of millions of dead ash trees in its wake. In Cincinnati alone, the beetle killed 10,000 ash trees. Brick by brick traveled with entomologist Joe Boggs, an Ohio State Assistant Professor in Hamilton County Extension to see the devastation the beetle has caused. So Joe, where are we and what are you noticing?

Joe Boggs:

We're in a park in Southwest Ohio, but it could be any park in Southern Ohio, all of Ohio, or any park in all of Indiana or any park in Kentucky. And what we're noticing is the impact of the non-native beetle known as emerald ash borer that took out the ash here. Now that's also created an opportunity. We started seeing first open canopy, open areas, but then the opportunity is that we see the parks replanting this park, other parks, to provide greater diversity.

Ann Thompson:

It's been years since dozens and dozens of ash trees died here in this park, but there are still signs like this dead one. It's surrounded by honeysuckle and grapevine.

Joe Boggs:

What we're seeing is a gradual changeover from a forest that had more shade. That shade helped to reduce some problems. And I should actually say that the honeysuckle can grow in the shade as well, but now that we've had the openings, we're starting to see a succession.

Ann Thompson:

Parks are doing their best to plant a variety of trees to replace ash. We walk first to an oak tree and then to this maple as a cautionary tale.

Joe Boggs:

This happens to be a red maple, but there is a story here not too far from where we're standing in Bethel, Ohio. About 15, 16 years ago we found another non-native insect called Asian Longhorned Beetle. Now, the reason that's important is because it kills all maples. Now the USDA and the United States Department of Agriculture, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, along with our Ohio Department of Agriculture, immediately got on targeting everything they could do to eliminate Asian longhorn beetle to eradicate it. Now I can say today they're very, very close.

Ann Thompson:

He explains we always have to be on guard, following fungi that wiped out both the American chestnut and American elm. Some experts think that maybe the emerald ash bore hasn't won yet. They are seeing shoots or finding trees that maybe weren't affected by the emerald ash bore. So what do you know about that?

Joe Boggs:

So originally we did not think that could happen. We didn't think there was any indication, any evidence of trees being resistant. However, over time we started seeing, I've seen it here locally in southwest Ohio, we started seeing big ash trees that should have been killed, making it right through.

Ann Thompson:

It colleges with the US Forest Service in Delaware, Ohio are monitoring new shoots called ash bushes. They say the blue ash does not seem to attract the emerald ash bore as much as other varieties of ash and the US Forest Service is working on a cross breeding project that could provide some resistance to the ash borer. But still, from a variety of factors, the state of Ohio reported in 2020 that in a fear period, the urban tree cover decreased 10,000 acres a year and this disappearing urban tree cover reportedly is also costing us an estimated $9.3 million a year in benefits associated with air pollution removal. Things like greening up heating and cooling systems. Cities across Ohio se the importance of tree canopies and are trying to figure out how to preserve existing trees and where to plant nuance. That's what Dayton is doing in creating an urban forest master plant.

It is calling on residents, organizations, and community partners to be part of an advisory group. Operation supervisor for the city street maintenance, Brian Urban says goals include making sure there's a good plan for maintenance, growing the urban tree canopy and bouncing back from bug infestation.

Bryan Urban:

Emerald ash borer was one that we'd been dealing with for several 10, 15 years at this point. There's also other invasive pests that have been spotted in Ohio that we haven't dealt with yet, but making sure we're prepared if we do have another invasive species come in. We dealt with a tornado in 2019, some severe weather outbreaks that caused significant tree loss and making sure we're prepared and ready if we have an event like that again in the future.

Ann Thompson:

When the advisory group begins to meet in August, it will have data. Crews are counting trees this summer.

Bryan Urban:

We did a inventory probably around 40 years ago in the 80s, but has not been updated since. So part of the plan is to do a complete street tree inventory throughout the entire city so we have accurate information about trees in the public right of way that we maintain.

Ann Thompson:

A $2 million federal grant will pay for the tree inventory, the master plan buying the trees, planting them, and maintaining them. Urban says the forest master plan will be finished next year. Cincinnati's community vision called the Green Cincinnati Plant is underway. Among other things, it calls for trees to cover 40% of all 52 neighborhoods. This is especially important because one report found stark inequities in tree cover. Little by little, the city is making progress. For example, volunteers and organizations planted more than 100 trees two years ago in the West End. President and CEO of the Cincinnati Parks Foundation, Jennifer Spieser explains.

Jennifer Spieser:

This is shade that won't be realized for several years, but you do have to start somewhere. And so having the community involved, engaging with all of the community organizations, that's important and even inviting neighbors to be a part of planting the trees and being a part of that one day big effort has been wonderful to see

Ann Thompson:

Spieser credits Mad Tree Brewing and other partners for this effort and others. In August, the parks will open the application process for residents to get a free tree and priority neighborhoods that fall way below the 40% tree canopy coverage. You can see the percentage of tree canopy in your Cincinnati neighborhood on a tree dashboard. There's a link at cetconnect.org and thinktv.org. Brick by Brick’s, Hernz Laguerre Jr. Is seeing Cincinnati's urban forestry plan in action where in Lower Price Hill and other priority neighborhoods, residents are realizing what a difference trees can make.

Jaeydah Edwards:

Hi, I'm Jaeydah Edwards and we're in Lower Price Hill right now to look at some street trees that we planted in 2022.

Hernz Laguerre Jr.:

Jaeydah is the interim director of the nonprofit organization, Groundwork Ohio River Valley. She gave Brick by Brick a tour of the neighborhood to see how much the trees grew in four years. These trees started out a little taller than a fire hydrant in 2022. Four years later, they grew to be taller than an average school bus.

Jaeydah Edwards:

If you go to a park and see the full size tree that has the big leaves that fall every fall, they'll get that big. So probably like the size of one of these buildings.

Hernz Laguerre Jr.:

The temperature was in the high 70s during our lower price hold tour.

Jaeydah Edwards:

Walk in on the other side of the street where the sun is shining really bright, you definitely get hot pretty quick and just knowing that these trees are going to grow to be pretty big to the point where you can walk under it and it'll provide us a lot of shade. I think that's just cool to know for residents too.

Hernz Laguerre Jr.:

But the trees are more important than just for shade, especially for this neighborhood.

Jaeydah Edwards:

Lower Price Hill specifically I think needs more green space. It's a highly industrial community, so there's a lot of factories here. There's a lot of concrete and tall buildings, so it's hotter. The air quality isn't as good because a lot of these factories are putting out pollution or we're close to the highway.

Hernz Laguerre Jr.:

Because of this, Groundwork formed the equity advisory group comprised of residents who want to help create the solution to the air quality problem in their neighborhood. Marcia Davis is one of those residents. She was skeptical at first to the difference that trees could make.

Marisha Davis:

I thought they were little liars like there's no such thing as it's cool in one neighborhood and hot than another one because they don't have trees. So that made me a believer.

Hernz Laguerre Jr.:

After visiting different Cincinnati neighborhoods like College Hill that have a higher tree canopy coverage in comparison to Lower Price Hill, she decided she wanted to be a part of the change in her neighborhood. What would you say is the benefit not only for yourself but for the whole community by having more of these trees in the community?

Marisha Davis:

The benefit is that it will collect us oxygen. It would kind of clean up most of the air, bad air that we get from that way, from the industry that's over there. It betters us to have that beautiful feeling. The thing keeps Cincinnati beautiful. So I'm just wondering, is it a certain neighborhood that need to be beautiful or can we all?

Hernz Laguerre Jr.:

And other neighborhoods are showing how beautiful the benefits can be. In Louisville, Kentucky, Dr. Rooney Bhatnagar leaves the Green Heart Project. It's a clinical trial in the South Louisville area where they planted about 8,000 trees in 2024.

Dr. Aruni Bhatnagar :

We thought that we were going to have to wait for five to 10 years to see any effect, but we was taken aback that this was quite a acute effect or quite an immediate effect.

Hernz Laguerre Jr.:

Dr. Aruni said it only took about a year to start seeing the results and other benefits from the trees.

Dr. Aruni Bhatnagar :

We saw within a year a decrease in inflammation. We saw decrease in blood pressure. They buffered noise, they buffer light. They actually clean the air, remove particles and pollutants. They also emit chemicals that actually could reduce your blood pressure and heart rate. They also make the neighborhood more pleasant.

Hernz Laguerre Jr.:

Dr. Aruni even saw outcomes he wasn't originally looking for.

Dr. Aruni Bhatnagar :

So there been the studies, particularly from Indianapolis and from Philadelphia where they show that planting trees and cleaning up people's yards and making them more looked after can decrease the crime rates. So there is a good indication for that. There is very good indication that there are strong mental effects. People who live in greener neighborhoods have lower levels of anxiety and depression and better mental health. And there are some reports that actually say that there are even lower rates of suicide in places that are more green.

Hernz Laguerre Jr.:

Trees do a lot to help better the communities they're rooted in, but according to Jada, they can't be a solo solution.

Jaeydah Edwards:

Planting trees helps improve the air quality and it provides shape for a neighborhood, but we have to think about why we have to do that in the first place. Why is it that there is so much industry in this small community? I think a lot of that has to do with history of either redlining or policy and tightening up guidelines.

Hernz Laguerre Jr.:

Groundwork is collecting data and doing research as well to send to the people that can make a larger impact.

Jaeydah Edwards:

Collecting that and sending it to either the city or the government through federal grants is really important so that they see that there are some things happening here that residents want. So what can they do from their end because they're the decision makers.

Hernz Laguerre Jr.:

Groundwork is replicating their work in Lower Price Hill to other Cincinnati communities. They have a tree planting event scheduled to happen in the Madisonville neighborhood in the fall of 2026 to help increase their tree academy coverage as well. For Brick by Brick, I'm Hernz Laguerre Jr.

Ann Thompson:

Amberley Village is outside the city of Cincinnati, but a city-owned park there could become a test bed for how other parks could increase their tree canopies. An anonymous donor gave the city an initial $150,000 and after successful efforts to remove invasive honeysuckle on 22 acres in French Park, that person followed up with a $1.8 million donation to rid the rest of the 281 acre park of the invasive species and plant thousands of trees. Here's the Parks Foundation's Jennifer Spieser again.

Jennifer Spieser:

It'll be the largest reforestation effort in a Cincinnati park since Mount Airy Forest in the 1930s, which that was just a very interesting project back in the 1930s with these New Deal era works progress administration contract work that was happening to plant all of those trees in Mount Airy Forest. And so it's thrilling that more than 95 years later between both of our organizations that we're going to be able to do this again in French Park and it'll almost serve as a laboratory because what's awesome about this opportunity certainly with donors is a model for others.

Ann Thompson:

Spieser has a plan like this could be scaled down to restore smaller parks like McEvoy in College Hill, for example. Trees can take 20 years to mature. There is a way to jumpstart them. Cincinnati and Hamilton County parks have a plan to collect wood waste and burn it in a kiln without oxygen. It's called biochar and it does two things, removes carbon from the atmosphere and supports the health of new plantings through this soil additive. Cincinnati says it aims to lead the country in the battle against climate change by becoming one of the first US cities to produce biochar will follow its progress. Coming up after the break, a California company is planting trees with an interesting twist and one of its first projects is in Ohio. 

Maddie Hall:

Taking low quality land and putting it back to work through the creation of different environmental assets.

Ann Thompson

Learn about Living Carbon when Brick by Brick continues.

Ame Clase:

Brick by Brick is made possible thanks to the generous support of so many, including Diane and Dave Moccia, P & G, The Camden Foundation,  The Stephen H. Wilder Foundation, TJ and Susie Ackermann, Patti and Fred Heldman, a donation in memory of Frank and Margaret Linhardt, and more. Thank you. We couldn't do this work without you.

Mark Lammers:

In cities and communities, we hear conversations around sustainable and strategic growth. Many times they may be thinking about attracting more people, growing the population, or perhaps increasing housing numbers in a responsible way. Everyone knows we'd love to see that. But as today's topic demonstrates the original sustainable growth may be our ability to develop community and collaboration with nature rather than fighting it. Hi, I'm Mark Lammers, executive producer of Brick by Brick. Looking at the many benefits of urban tree canopies and tree and plant life generally, you can really get lost in the weeds, but every green shoot of evidence such as improved air quality, reduced heat island effects, social and health benefits, even impacts on crime show that this is one of the oldest and most natural solutions available. So what do you think about prioritizing tree canopies at the local level? Should we be preserving, strengthening, or even expanding them?

We'd love to hear your thoughts. You can share them via the feedback link in the show notes of this podcast. There's also a big green button on our show page at cetconnect.org and thinktv.org. And if you have any other solutions from nature, we'd love to hear about those as well. For now, I'll let you get back to exploring this green solution. Thanks.

Ann Thompson:

Welcome back to Brick by Brick. In Appalachia, there's an effort underway to plant trees on abandoned mine land, land which would likely never have been rejuvenated because it's too expensive. The idea comes from Maddie Hall, CEO of Living Carbon, a California company funded by big tech to green up the US.

Maddie Hall:

It became very clear to me that humans were degrading land very quickly. About 75 percent of all acres of land have been degraded due to human activity. And I wanted to figure out a way where we could use different market mechanisms to put those lands back to work.

Ann Thompson:

Here’s how the idea to reforest land formerly used for mining and abandoned agricultural sites, works according to Living Carbon Chief Product Officer Rahul Mishra. 

Rahul Mishra:

We use a lot of technology and different software that we have at our disposal to identify specific sites that might be good matches for our solutions. And then we go out and identify those landowners, engage with them, see if they’re even interested in what we have to offer.”

Ann Thompson:

Interested landowners lease their land over 40 years. Living Carbon also works with local partners. In this case-Appalachia Ohio Alliance and its executive director Steve Fleegal. 

Steve Fleegal:

We stumbled into them at a convention. One of their people had started talking to them. We actually interviewed a lot of diferent companies and none of them really served the needs that we had. They just weren't good partnerships. The thing with Living Carbon is for us is that their interests align very closely with our interests. as far as reforestation and taking care of these forests and providing high quality forests over time. 

Ann Thompson:

For Living Carbon, here’s where the money comes from-Microsoft, Google, Meta and McKinsey and Co., buy carbon credits to offset their own carbon emissions.  

Companies that buy carbon credits are sometimes asked if they’re just greenwashing, or in fact not making much of an environmental difference.  

Rahul Mishra:

I mean, that concern's real and it's something that all the participants in the carbon markets should take into account. I think in our case, we're not protecting forests that maybe we're going to survive anyways. Our sites are clearly additional. Carbon will plant trees on

Ann Thompson:

Living Carbon will plant trees on 25 thousand acres of degraded mine land in Appalachia.  

Maddie Hall:

Our hope actually is to 10x that scale of work. We recently announced a big partnership with Octopus Energy Generation. They're a large renewable company in the United Kingdom and they're working with Living Carbon to accelerate the different acres that we’re planting on and do so in a way that is really scalable.

Ann Thompson:

Hall says the company is limited by land records that can often bog the process down. Also, she says you can only plant trees in the spring and fall, so it takes time. None the less, the company has already planted two point one million trees across multiple states, including nine counties in Ohio. The trees include American sycamore, a variety of oak, red maples and honey locusts. 

Planting trees is an old strategy. Does it work? Here are some international examples. After a series of floods in the late 1990s, China gave residents financial incentives and trained them to plant trees in flood zones. It worked. Since 2000, tree cover has increased by 3% and studies have shown soil erosion decreased. Saudi Arabia has planted 159 million trees and shrubs and the country is already seeing success after the initiative began in 2021, expanding its vegetation cover. It has a goal of planting 10 billion trees. Here are two other examples where planting trees didn't work.

Turkey planted 11 million trees in 2019, but by March, nearly 90% were dead because there wasn't enough rainfall. It seems there is a need to better understand weather and climate data and droughts can happen at inopportune times. And in India, the country devoted extensive resources to planting trees over 50 years, but satellite imagery shows the hundreds of millions of seedlings in the northern part of the country did not increase the amount of dense tree cover. Researchers believed the trees died quickly because farmers planted them in the wrong habitat and animals destroyed some seedlings. Maybe in this case, there was a need for better training and coordination. In the US, Philadelphia over the past decade planted about a thousand mostly street trees each year with residents responsible for maintenance. Research found the overall survival rate decreased from 92% alive in the first summer to 77% by the fourth summer.

Mortality rates decreased over time. Some of this research is from the environmental blog, Eco and Close. In one of its articles, Tree Planning Initiatives, The Good, Bad and the Ugly, the authors say tree planting must be part of a broader effort to mitigate negative impacts and promote positive improvements. They say the goal should be restoring forests and regions to their natural state, not just increasing the tree cover. They recommend looking at intentions versus outcomes, avoiding greenwashing, quality over quantity, planting native species, and doing research before beginning tree planting programs. University College London and the University of Edinboro evaluated government commitments around tree planting and found 45% involving planting vast monocultures of trees, in other words, the same species over a large area as profitable enterprises. The authors say this is both a massive oversight and a devastating missed opportunity.

Limitations for tree planning come down to cost, political will, and the proper training if residents are expected to care for them. Here's one reason why funding and political will is important. Monetary constraints and limitations in biotechnology slowed early recovery efforts for chestnut light and Dutch Elm disease. However, entomologist Joe Boggs says the US Department of Agriculture does have a rigorous early detection and rapid response now to try and find invasive insects early. We have a link to the good, the bad, and the ugly article on our website as well as the Cincinnati Tree Dashboard and the city's heat map. You can also find Hearns and Amico stories and articles about other topics. That's at cetconnect.org and thinktv.org. We're talking trees in this episode and the solution of tree canopies, and we welcome to the microphone, Hernz Laguerre Jr.

Hernz Laguerre Jr.:

Hello.

Ann Thompson:

Emiko is taking some much needed time off, so we'll catch up with her on the next takeaway.

Hernz Laguerre Jr.:

Yes, ma'am.

Ann Thompson:

Back to trees. This was an idea that you had, Hernz, some time ago. The way it works is we sit down, our team, and we try to think of problems in communities and possible solutions. And I know you mentioned trees and I was a little skeptical about whether trees could fill an entire episode.

Hernz Laguerre Jr.:

And to be honest, I was skeptical too. And the idea truly came from all the environmental summits that we went to, but yeah, trees do a lot. And I grew up in a town that had a whole bunch of trees in Spring Valley, New York. And let's just say I took for granted all the things that trees do for us. So that's why I thought it would be a great topic.

Ann Thompson:

Yeah. I also took for granted things that trees do for us. I grew up in a yard that had lots of trees and I didn't really give it a second though. But in doing our research for this episode, I don't know if you can hear this and this is just the Ohio report.

Hernz Laguerre Jr.:

And for folks who are ... Those sound effect is-

Ann Thompson:

I’ll do it again

Hernz Laguerre Jr.:

It's a stack of paper that Anne has. Well, I don't know. It's like maybe six inches thick of all the-

Ann Thompson:

It's hundreds of pages

This Ohio report

Hernz Laguerre Jr.:

And then- Just on trees.

Ann Thompson:

It's in a folder with other reports that have lots of pages and so there's no shortage for sure

On this topic.

Hernz Laguerre Jr.:

So you're saying we can definitely revisit this topic and have a lot more to say?

Ann Thompson:

I would think so.

Hernz Laguerre Jr.:

I think on top of that, this episode just reminded me of what we do here on Brick by Brick with solution journalism. We look at solutions, but we also look at the limitations of them because no solution is perfect. And I think that shows itself to be true in this episode for sure. Because when I was talking to Jada Edwards and we were talking about air quality, she gave some solutions that even she admitted had some limitations. So let's say if you live in an area without a lot of trees, but you live next to a highway, there's a lot of carbon emissions coming from the car, from the cars passing by, maybe what you could do is close your windows during peak hours, just so that all that carbon emission isn't coming into your home. Maybe have air conditioning as opposed to leaving your window open during the day in order to get fresh air, get air purifying plants.

The one thing that all these things require is having the finances to do that. What if you don't have money to pay high electricity bills for using air conditioning or if you don't have money for air purifying plants? I think those are all things that need to be considered and even Jada Edwards admitted herself that the thing that would have the biggest impact is policy change. Having factories in areas like Lower Price Hill obey EPA laws or make sure that they obey EPA laws in order to make sure the air quality is better than what it is. Maybe put some tree barriers alongside highways in order to stop the carbon emissions coming from the cars and stuff. So these are all things to consider and definitely a lot to look into in regards to what's actually going to make an impact in these areas.

Ann Thompson:

Yes. More to tell with this topic, trees and tree canopies, but also other issues that we encounter in the community and possible solutions. So no shortage of topics or material.

Hernz Laguerre Jr.:

For sure. Yeah. I think we're going to cover forest bathing in the future in season three. So be on the lookout for that.

Ann Thompson:

Thanks for your thoughts, Hernz.

Hernz Laguerre Jr.:

No problem

Ann Thompson:

Coming up on the next brick by brick, we look back to some of our most memorable solutions and episodes and pass along important updates.

Dr. Meredith Smith:

Two years ago, Hamilton County celebrated its lowest infant mortality on record. Black infant mortality was in the single digits. It was celebratory. However, today we share difficult news. Infant mortality has increased to 9.3, which is we count one death and 1,000 live births.

Ann Thompson:

We'll share new Cradle Cincinnati numbers, update the  Dayton Doula program., revisit community run grocery stores and check in with a high school class trying to improve pedestrian safety. We'll also preview possible topics for next season. That's on Brick by Brick. 

That's our show. If you like what you heard, please rate and review our podcast. It makes it easier to find and share it out with your friends and family. We also appreciate your thoughts on our website. Click on the big green button at cetconnect.org and thinktv.org. For Hernz Laguerre Jr. And Emiko Moore, I'm Ann Thompson. Take care.

Our show is produced, hosted an edited by me, Ann Thompson with reporting and story editing from Hernz Laguerre Jr. and Emiko Moore. Our Executive producer of Mark Lammers. Audio sweetening provided by Mike Schwartz. Zach Kramer runs the lights and cameras. Derrick Smith is our production specialist and Jason Garrison is our production manager. Marketing and promotions from Mike Shea and Bridgett Dillenburger. Elyssa Stefenson handles the website and Josh Lusby and Steve Wright are our designers. Bill Dean and Andres Kruza are the engineers for the show and our Chief Content Officer is Colin Scianamblo. Our music is from Universal Production Music. Brick by Brick: Solutions for a Thriving Community is a production of CET and ThinkTV, Southwest Ohio PBS member stations.