KINGSTON, R.I. – Nov. 6, 2025 – Throughout her professional career, Hilda Lloréns has focused her research work on improving community well-being within Puerto Rican and Latinx communities in Rhode Island and in her native Connecticut. The anthropology professor’s dedication will be recognized next month when she receives the Hispanic Health Council’s inaugural Applied Anthropology Research Award at its annual gala for her groundbreaking contributions to scholarship and public engagement.
The Hispanic Health Council promotes equity and addresses health disparities for Hispanics, Latinos and other vulnerable communities through research, advocacy and culturally resonant services. Lloréns, who teaches and researches in the University of Rhode Island’s Departments of Gender and Women’s Studies, Sociology and Anthropology, and Marine Affairs, became connected with the Council and the Institute for Community Research in Hartford, Conn., while she pursued graduate study at the University of Connecticut.
There, Lloréns began researching what causes some residents in certain communities to develop health issues, such as asthma, and how to create policies to improve overall well-being. Since then, Lloréns’ work has been centrally concerned with critiquing structural inequalities and dismantling notions of power that have been taken for granted, particularly those involving community health in Connecticut, Rhode Island, and among Latinx populations.
“I feel very honored and humbled to be the first person to receive this award,” Lloréns said. “The work that the Hispanic Health Council and the Institute for Community Research has been doing for decades, for me, is an inspiration to a lot of my work and I also hope to make an impact to improve community well-being.”
Lloréns has authored multiple books and academic articles focusing on race, gender, ecology and the environment, and culture and power within the Americas. Her 2021 book Making Livable Worlds: Afro-Puerto Rican Women Building Environmental Justice—which highlights how Afro-Puerto Rican women create restorative alternatives to dispossession to produce good, meaningful lives for their communities through solidarity, reciprocity, and ethics of care—won awards from the Puerto Rican Studies Association and the Society for Cultural Anthropology.
Currently on leave from URI to serve as Wellesley College’s 2025-26 Mary L. Cornille Distinguished Visiting Professor, Lloréns is working on a new book focusing on Latinxs accessing the outdoors across the country, including in Rhode Island. Lloréns’ continues to work as an applied anthropologist through her community-engaged and public-facing research.
She recently published an article in the summer/fall edition of URI’s Sea Grant magazine 41°N, spotlightinghow Movement Education Outdoors is working to narrow the “nature gap” for youth of color from Rhode Island’s urban areas. The nonprofit is helping expose urban youth to the environment and outdoors, which could lead to job opportunities in nature fields, such as aquaculture, environmental justice advocacy, and urban farming, among others.
As part of her work, Lloréns has interviewed Groundwork Rhode Island’s Providence Green Team Youth, about its composting, tree planting and care, and urban farming work in Rhode Island. Tree planting and care in urban communities is important, she says, because less tree canopy exists there compared with other areas leading to to higher risk for asthma and respiratory diseases among youth and elderly residents, significantly hotter air temperature and air quality discrepancies between other communities, as well as higher utility bills for families.
“The health-related risks of having no to low tree canopy in urban areas just skyrockets,” Lloréns said. “If there is no tree coverage, people are paying more [for utilities], which can have a terrible impact on a household’s finances. Also, not everybody has access to air conditioning or the ability to pay the high energy costs of running an air conditioner.”