The research of urban sociologist Dr. Jesus Hernandez is dedicated to understanding social problems that affect community cohesion, neighborhood development, and quality of life. His research places a priority on the dynamics between urban governance, private enterprise and the practice of community economic development. His primary focus is on how these associations can either create safe, sustainable communities or produce problems of disparate impact and uneven economic growth that interrupt local efforts towards neighborhood stabilization. The urgency to connect neighborhoods to policy, planning and funding resources resulted in JCH Research, a consulting firm he created to provide flexibility in meshing academic research and macro-scale urban policy to the on-the-ground practice of sustainability and climate change at the neighborhood scale. His research approach prioritizes the neighborhood as an important unit of analysis and emphasizes neighborhood-scale economic development and revitalization in ways that directly address racial/spatial wealth gaps and disparate public investment patterns.