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Participatory Research for Environmental Justice: A Critical Interpretive Synthesis
Abstract
Background:
Environmental health risks are disproportionately colocated with communities in poverty and communities of color. In some cases, participatory research projects have effectively addressed structural causes of health risk in environmental justice (EJ) communities. However, many such projects fail to catalyze change at a structural level.
Objectives:
This review employs Critical Interpretive Synthesis (CIS) to theorize specific elements of participatory research for environmental health that effectively prompt structural change in EJ communities.
Methods:
Academic database search was used to identify peer-reviewed literature describing participatory research with EJ communities to address environmental health. Synthetic constructs were developed iteratively related to study characteristics, design elements, and outcomes; and data were extracted for included records. Statistical analyses were performed to assess correlations between study design elements and structural change outcomes. Through critical, comparative, and contextual analyses of the "structural change" case study group and "non- structural change" group, informed by relevant theoretical literature, a synthesizing argument was generated.
Results:
From 505 total records identified, eligibility screening produced 232 case study articles, representing 154 case studies, and 55 theoretical articles for synthesis. Twenty-six case studies resulted in a structural change outcome. The synthesizing argument states that participatory research with EJ communities may be more likely to result in structural change when a) community members hold formal leadership roles; b) project design includes decision-makers and policy goals; and c) long term partnerships are sustained through multiple funding mechanisms. The assumption of EJ community benefit through research participation is critically examined.
Discussion:
Recommended future directions include establishing structural change as a goal of participatory research, employing participatory assessment of community benefit, and increased hiring of faculty of color at research institutions. The power, privilege, and political influence that academic institutions are able to leverage in partnership with EJ communities may be as valuable as the research itself. https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP6274.
... All of these studies were designed with an eye towards informing potential future action to improve public health. We characterize all three of these studies as CBPR, using Davis and Ramírez-Andreotta's definition 23 ; Table 1 depicts how each of the cases aligns with the best practices for participatory research 23 identified in their review. More detailed descriptions of the methods of each of these studies are described in further detail in the articles cited. ...
... All of these studies were designed with an eye towards informing potential future action to improve public health. We characterize all three of these studies as CBPR, using Davis and Ramírez-Andreotta's definition 23 ; Table 1 depicts how each of the cases aligns with the best practices for participatory research 23 identified in their review. More detailed descriptions of the methods of each of these studies are described in further detail in the articles cited. ...
... How Our Three Cases Aligned With Best Practices for Participatory Research Identified by Davis & Ramírez-Andreottai.23 ...
Background
Community-based participatory research coproduces knowledge by emphasizing bidirectional exchanges between participants, communities, and researchers.
Purpose, Research Design, and Study Sample
We highlight three studies in historically marginalized communities on separate continents (Richmond, CA, USA; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Marseille industrial zone, France) to exemplify how community-based participatory research improves research, offers tangible community benefits, and values residents more than traditional research methods.
Data Analysis
We provide insights into the process of conducting meaningful community-based participatory epidemiologic research.
Results
In each of these communities, community-based participatory research led to high-quality research that helped inform context-appropriate policies and programs to improve health and advance health equity in these communities.
Conclusions
We recommend that researchers consistently engage with community members during all phases of research so that they can engage more participants, more deeply in the research process, build local capacity, improve data collection and data quality, as well as increase our understanding of research findings to inform future applied research and practice.
... This requires crosssector collaboration, which is still not the default (Karvonen et al., 2021). Partly owed to the aforementioned challenges, there are significant areas within urban environmental health research that remain largely underexplored, such as inequalities (Cociña et al., 2022) and social and environmental justice (Davis & Ramírez-Andreotta, 2021), the influence of urban form on modal share and mobility hierarchy (Bassolas et al., 2019), intervention studies (e.g., that assess the efficacy of implementing changes to transport systems, such as parking removal and congestion charges) (Kuss & Nicholas, 2022), and determinants and motivations behind behavioural change (Avineri, 2021). ...
... For this, the power of co-design, co-creation, and co-evaluation should not be underestimated (Boeing et al., 2022). Engaging with participatory processes and citizen science, from refining research objectives and local data collection to policy implementation and monitoring can enhance awareness of urban environmental challenges and acceptance of change (Davis & Ramírez-Andreotta, 2021). This approach can improve local community data, allow tracking of changes and impacts resulting from local actions, and ultimately foster a greater sense of ownership. ...
Recent advances in data science and urban environmental health research utilise large-scale databases (100s–1000s of cities) to explore the complex interplay of urban characteristics such as city form and size, climate, mobility, exposure, and environmental health impacts. Cities are still hotspots of air pollution and noise, suffer urban heat island effects and lack of green space, which leads to disease and mortality burdens preventable with better knowledge. Better understanding through harmonising and analysing data in large numbers of cities is essential to identifying the most effective means of disease prevention and understanding context dependencies important for policy.
... This requires cross-sector collaboration, which is still not the default 16 . Partly owed to the aforementioned challenges, there are significant areas within urban environmental health research that remain largely underexplored, such as inequalities 17 and social and environmental justice 18 , the influence of urban form on modal share and mobility hierarchy 6 , intervention studies (e.g., that assess the efficacy of implementing changes to transport systems, such as parking removal and congestion charges) 19 , and determinants and motivations behind behavioural change 20 . ...
... For this, the power of co-design, co-creation, and co-evaluation should not be underestimated 29 . Engaging with participatory processes and citizen science, from refining research objectives and local data collection to policy implementation and monitoring can enhance awareness of urban environmental challenges and acceptance of change 18 . This approach can improve local community data, allow tracking of changes and impacts resulting from local actions, and ultimately foster a greater sense of ownership. ...
... The planning phase lays the foundation to enhance multi-partner engagement to identify locally relevant recovery indicators and evaluation processes to track recovery and reduce flood risk. Components of the planning phase incorporate lessons from the literature on knowledge co-production (e.g., Davis & Ramirez-Andreotta, 2021;Meadow et al., 2015). ...
... Meanwhile, partners, including community members, organizations, and government officials, are best suited to identify and guide recovery priorities. Lessons from environmental justice research suggest community members hold meaningful funded positions, so community partners should hold leadership roles in implementing the framework (Davis & Ramirez-Andreotta, 2021). Emergency management professionals, social workers, and planners can support the interpretation of disparate flood recovery outcomes. ...
Floods impact communities worldwide, resulting in loss of life, damaged infrastructure and natural assets, and threatened livelihoods. Climate change and urban development in flood‐prone areas will continue to worsen flood‐related losses, increasing the urgency for effective tools to monitor recovery. Many Earth Observation (EO) applications exist for flood‐hazard monitoring and provide insights on location, timing, and extent in near real‐time and historically to estimate flood risk. Less attention has been paid to flood recovery, even though differing recovery rates and outcomes can have immediate and enduring distributional effects within communities. EO data are uniquely positioned to monitor post‐flood recovery and inform policy on hazard mitigation and adaptation but remain underutilized. We encourage the EO and flood research community to refocus on developing flood recovery applications to address growing risk. Translation of EO insights on flood recovery among flood‐affected communities and decision‐makers is necessary to address underlying social vulnerabilities that exacerbate inequitable recovery outcomes and advocate for redressing injustices where disparate recovery is observed. We identify an unequivocal need for EO to move beyond mapping flood hazard and exposure toward post‐flood recovery monitoring to inform recovery across geographic contexts. This commentary proposes a framework for remote sensing scientists to engage community‐based partners to integrate EO with non‐EO data to advance flood recovery monitoring, characterize inequitable recovery, redistribute resources to mitigate inequities, and support risk reduction of future floods.
... While our framework for community engagement is intended to be broadly inclusive of many forms of collaborative relationships between the public and environmental managers, we also recognize that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to community engagement. Engaging with different types of groups and community members will involve varying degrees of attention and effort, and building trusting relationships with marginalized communities will involve more significant investments in time and resources (Davis and Ramírez-Andreotta 2021). Doing so involves the cultivation of strong partnerships with communities, and in cases where lake managers are working with marginalized communities, it can be beneficial to hire community members as engagement staff and to create data reports for community members that are translated into community-oriented language and learning, and that also provide information on opportunities for further involvement by community members (Davis and Ramírez-Andreotta 2021). ...
... Engaging with different types of groups and community members will involve varying degrees of attention and effort, and building trusting relationships with marginalized communities will involve more significant investments in time and resources (Davis and Ramírez-Andreotta 2021). Doing so involves the cultivation of strong partnerships with communities, and in cases where lake managers are working with marginalized communities, it can be beneficial to hire community members as engagement staff and to create data reports for community members that are translated into community-oriented language and learning, and that also provide information on opportunities for further involvement by community members (Davis and Ramírez-Andreotta 2021). ...
... Resource constraints take many forms. One reliable indicator of community-based participatory research is the long-term commitment of funding and resources to the planning and implementation of a project (Davis & Ramírez-Andreotta, 2021). This requires resources from ORD to both plan and follow through on research projects, but also stable resources from other Agency and community partners to ensure long-term project stability. ...
... Recent evidence has indicated that conducting research at the community level can be more resource intensive than research that does not directly engage communities. Community-based research requires particular attention to the unique challenges a community faces, as well as a long-term commitment to ensure successful implementation (Davis & Ramírez-Andreotta, 2021). That being said, communitybased research, if implemented correctly and sufficiently resourced, can produce results that are more rigorous, relevant, and have greater impact for the communities of interest (Balazs & Morello-Frosch, 2013). ...
In support of EPA’s efforts to take steps to better serve historically marginalized communities using cumulative impact assessment, the Office of Research and Development (ORD) authored this report that presents recommendations on how to strengthen the scientific foundation for assessing cumulative impacts within ORD’s FY23-26 Strategic Research Action Plans. These recommendations were synthesized from inputs across multiple engagement events with ORD partners both internal and external to the Agency to identify research needs, gaps, and barriers related to cumulative impact assessments.
... Community-based participatory research (CBPR) approaches are critical to an equitycentered research framework [35][36][37][38][39]. CBPR typically uses a multi-step approach to disable the traditional hierarchical structure of research, including collaborating with community partners as equal partners and leaders, generating research questions that align with the needs of the community, and sharing decision-making in all phases of the research process including interpretation of results and authorship roles and order [40,41]. ...
... Fifth, we assessed the perceived importance of outdoor time. While perhaps intuitive, it is critical when conducting CBPR to incorporate the perspectives of the priority population or community instead of making assumptions about priorities and values regarding outdoor time for their children [37,38,40]. All participants reported that children should spend time outside. ...
A growing body of literature suggests that outdoor time is beneficial for physical and mental health in childhood. Profound disparities exist in access to outdoor spaces (and the health benefits thereof) for children in communities of color. The objectives of this research were to: (1) identify challenges and solutions to outdoor time for children; (2) assess the importance of outdoor time for children; and (3) evaluate results stratified by race/ethnicity. Using a convergent mixed methods approach, we conducted a thematic analysis from 14 focus groups (n = 50) with outdoor educators, parents with children attending outdoor preschools, and community members with children. In addition, 49 participants completed a survey to identify challenges and solutions, perceived importance, and culturally relevant perspectives of outdoor time. The main challenges identified for outdoor time were safety concerns, inclement weather, lack of access to outdoor spaces, and parent work schedules. The primary proposed solution was integrating outdoor time into the school day. Nearly all participants, independent of racial identity, reported that outdoor time improved physical and mental health. Overall outdoor time was lower in participants from communities of color (~8 h/week) compared to their White counterparts (~10 h/week). While 50% of people of color (POC) reported that outdoor time was an important cultural value, only 18% reported that people in their respective culture spent time outside. This work contributes to accumulating knowledge that unique barriers to outdoor time exist for communities of color, and the children that live, learn, and play in these communities. Increasing outdoor time in school settings offers a potential solution to reduce identified barriers and to promote health equity in childhood.
... In this scoping review, we focused on the research process and asked the questions: what were the goals of the environmental justice studies and which methods did researchers use to achieve these goals? Prior reviews have covered specific methods and topics related to EJ, including: methods for EJ air pollution studies [27,28] and proximity-based studies [29]; participatory EJ research [30]; fine-scale spatio-temporal [31] and remote sensing [32] data for EJ; causal inference methods for EJ [33]; and methods for longitudinal EJ studies [34]. However, to our knowledge, there has not been a comprehensive review of EJ methods as they have been applied across the diverse subdisciplines of environmental health sciences. ...
... While not all EJ studies will incorporate community-engaged practices it is still important to acknowledge the role and value of being in community [294,295]. Particularly when it comes to advancing meaningful change, participatory research with EJ communities is more likely to result in structural level change [30]. Full integration of community members into the design, implementation, and action level decisions is recommended to advance EJ. ...
Purpose of Review
The volume of public health environmental justice (EJ) research produced by academic institutions increased through 2022. However, the methods used for evaluating EJ in exposure science and epidemiologic studies have not been catalogued. Here, we completed a scoping review of EJ studies published in 19 environmental science and epidemiologic journals from 2018 to 2021 to summarize research types, frameworks, and methods.
Recent Findings
We identified 402 articles that included populations with health disparities as a part of EJ research question and met other inclusion criteria. Most studies (60%) evaluated EJ questions related to socioeconomic status (SES) or race/ethnicity. EJ studies took place in 69 countries, led by the US (n = 246 [61%]). Only 50% of studies explicitly described a theoretical EJ framework in the background, methods, or discussion and just 10% explicitly stated a framework in all three sections. Among exposure studies, the most common area-level exposure was air pollution (40%), whereas chemicals predominated personal exposure studies (35%). Overall, the most common method used for exposure-only EJ analyses was main effect regression modeling (50%); for epidemiologic studies the most common method was effect modification (58%), where an analysis evaluated a health disparity variable as an effect modifier.
Summary
Based on the results of this scoping review, current methods in public health EJ studies could be bolstered by integrating expertise from other fields (e.g., sociology), conducting community-based participatory research and intervention studies, and using more rigorous, theory-based, and solution-oriented statistical research methods.
... This research was part of a larger research project called FEMPUBLICBCN, which adhered to the Declaration of Helsinki principles and received ethics approval from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona's committee (CEEAH 5465). We adopted a communityengaged approach, involving a participatory research project conducted in collaboration with a community advisory board that provided input throughout the research process (Davis & Ramírez-Andreotta, 2021). ...
The COVID‐19 outbreak triggered a combined health, social and economic crisis, imposing multiple restrictions that altered the use and perception of public green and blue spaces (PGBS). In this article, we explored how the different stages of the COVID‐19 pandemic restrictions affected the use and perceptions of public greenspaces and seafront in gentrifying neighbourhoods, focusing specifically on women and non‐binary residents.
We conducted a comparative analysis of two densely populated neighbourhoods in Barcelona, Spain, employing a participatory mixed‐methods approach including surveys, focus groups, participatory walks and semi‐structured interviews. We collected the perceptions from women and non‐binary residents for the pre‐pandemic period, the lockdown period and the period during the post‐lockdown gradual ease of restrictions.
Our findings reveal that during the COVID‐19 lockdown, the use of neighbourhood PGBS was maintained or intensified, highlighting the existing deficit in the denser areas of the city. However, post‐lockdown, use patterns changed, with differences based on neighbourhood characteristics and gentrification pressures. This suggests that while COVID‐19 seemed to temporarily impact how people used PGBS, these changes were rapidly reversed once mobility restrictions were lifted. During and after the pandemic, PGBS facilitated informal care networks and community cohesion that helped residents endure the impacts of the pandemic, but the return of gentrification and touristification pressures disrupted these networks, heightening feelings of displacement and exclusion among women and non‐binary residents. The research underscores the dual role of PGBS as both essential community spaces and sites of exclusion, emphasizing the need for inclusive and just green planning strategies.
Policy implications. Urban planning must prioritize the quality and accessibility of PGBS with a gender‐sensitive approach and address broader issues of gentrification and touristification to protect vulnerable populations. An environmentally just greening approach should consider proximity, safety, accessibility and design to facilitate the use of PGBS by socially vulnerable groups.
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... 'A mapping tool [would be useful] that they can look at their area and they can see all the layers of the different data quite easily like a GIS system.' [MAEVE] 'A GIA spatial tool which tries to just layer on different climate impacts and you could also layer on some of the key socioeconomic data.' [DEREK] The use, benefits and pitfalls of such data mapping tools using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are a core focus of emerging international and national dialogue (Kuruppuarachchi, et al., 2017;Maantay, 2002). However, much of this work focuses on major issues such as health, flood hazards and heat impacts ( (Davis & Ramirez-Andreotta, 2021). Interestingly, despite calling for more effective use of mapping tools, Derek also cautioned that some things cannot be easily mapped, and this should not be a reason for ignoring potential issues: ...
This research builds on the report and recommendations of the Cheshire and Warrington Sustainable and Inclusive Growth Commission (SIGC) (2022) (Sustainable and Inclusive Growth Commission, 2022) . It seeks to develop an inter-disciplinary Environmental Justice Framework (the Framework) for use by public and private sector decision makers. This aims to ensure inclusivity and environmental justice is mainstreamed throughout the development, implementation, and monitoring of environmental sustainability (ES) policy and actions introduced across the subregion of Cheshire and Warrington. This Framework will seek to reduce inequalities in ES development and implementation and ensure that ES measures are built on inclusive foundations of environmental justice to ensure equity, efficacy, and impact. This research builds upon existing strengths and sub-regional work and addresses identified challenges. It brings together partners from industry, local government, community and voluntary sector, academia, and communities (particularly, marginalised voices).
... Studentresearchers embraced CBPAR despite pressures to follow established extractive research routes and many academic sacrifices were made to prevent delays in community action (Deeb-Sossa et al., 2022). The survey process and results steered by local experts led to expanded research directions and implementation of feasible community actions over 6 years despite shortcomings in our sustained efforts to achieve structural change (Davis & Ramírez-Andreotta, 2021). ...
Environmental justice research driven by academics and policymakers often overlooks the valuable insights and leadership of the communities most impacted by environmental hazards. When institution‐led research approaches are employed, inadequate community ownership and limited institutional accountability hinder the effectiveness of environmental public health interventions. In contrast, a community‐owned and ‐managed approach to environmental justice research can guide community members in developing evidence‐based interventions. This paper outlines a community‐led environmental health assessment survey (sample = 100) and resulting community actions over 6 years (2017–2023) in a Northern California farmworker community with a perceived high prevalence of cancer and exposure to environmental hazards in households, neighborhoods, and job sites. Local resident experts in Knights Landing, CA, documented community risk factors and exposures in collaboration with interdisciplinary undergraduate and graduate student‐researchers. The survey instrument focused on environmental hazards identified by local resident experts including vehicular and agricultural pollution, occupational pesticide contact, and sun exposure. Survey findings highlighted the need for targeted interventions to reduce environmental health risks, such as academic outreach programs, county investments in public services, and community‐led mutual aid initiatives. Despite academic reservations about our non‐random sampling method and data collection by local resident experts, our project sparked substantial actions and investments with minimal personnel and financial resources. Local leaders working with student‐researchers developed more effective environmental public health interventions through a community‐owned and ‐managed approach that went beyond the efforts of local regulatory and research institutions.
... 5 Participatory action research, another pedagogical strategy, engages community members directly in the research process, ensuring their voices are heard, and their concerns are addressed. 6 This kind of place-based education encourages learning that is rooted in the local context, providing students with a deeper understanding of their surroundings, and fostering a sense of connection to their community. Integrating environmental justice themes into place-based education can raise awareness of local environmental issues and empower students to take action. ...
Social drivers and spatial practices have perpetuated systemic racism, resulting in uneven resource distribution and envi¬ronmental inequalities in urban processes like development, infrastructures, management, governance, and ecologies. Limited investigation into the environmental effects of struc¬tured racism calls for research initiatives, design courses, and workshops exploring the relationship between spatial segregation, ecological processes, and landscape biodiversity in marginalized communities, specifically in the east side of Cleveland, Ohio. This paper focuses on distinct neighborhoods in east Cleveland, mainly Central neighborhood, with the highest environmental justice burden scores according to Cuyahoga County Environmental Justice Index Map. The research uses quantitative and qualitative methods to study spatial manifes¬tations of environmental injustices in areas with the highest black population, examining housing segregation, hazardous material use, proximity to toxic industrial sites, waste hazards, lack of tree canopies, and landscape heterogeneity. Four pedagogical approaches are incorporated: Environmental Justice Education engages residents in understanding the impacts of redlining and uneven resource distribution, Participatory Action Research (PAR) showcases data on health problems and community experiences, and Fostering Environmental Awareness through Place-Based Education involves students and the community in studying tree canopy disparities. Additionally, Design and Planning Studios envision future trajectories for more equitable urban greening initia¬tives and social justice. By integrating residents’ perspectives and these pedagogies, the research aims to inform more sustainable and socially equitable spatial practices, addressing systemic racism and fostering positive transformations in the well-being of communities in Eastern Cleveland.
... 60 This approach, coupled with participatory research with affected communities, has been shown to lead to structural change outcomes. 61 ...
Background:
Exposure to arsenic (As) in well water is a well-documented public health issue for Maine and New Hampshire, as well as for other states in the United States and abroad. Arsenic contamination of well water in these locations is primarily attributed to metasedimentary bedrock that leaches As into groundwater. However, As can also enter groundwater reserves from soils contaminated by the historical use of arsenical pesticides. Approximately half of the households in Maine and New Hampshire rely on private wells, many of which have elevated As. Arsenic exposure has been associated with an increased risk of cancer, cardiovascular disease, reduced infection resistance, and lower intelligence quotient in children. Despite these known health impacts, well water testing and treatment are not universal.
Objectives:
We have approached the problem of low well water testing rates in Maine and New Hampshire communities by developing the All About Arsenic (AAA) project, which engages secondary school teachers and students as citizen scientists in collecting well water samples for analysis of As and other toxic metals and supports their outreach efforts to their communities.
Methods:
We assessed this project's public health impact by analyzing student data relative to existing well water quality datasets in both states. In addition, we surveyed private well owners who contributed well water samples to the project to determine the actions taken to mitigate As in well water.
Results:
Students collected 3,070 drinking water samples for metals testing, and 752 exceeded New Hampshire's As standard of 5 ppb. The AAA data has more than doubled the amount of information available to public health agencies about well water quality in multiple municipalities across both states. Students also collected information about well types and treatment systems. Their data reveal that some homeowners did not know what type of wells they had or whether they had filtration systems. Those with filtration systems were often unaware of the type of system, what the system was filtering for, or whether the system was designed to remove As. Through interviews with pilot survey participants, we learned that some had begun mitigating their exposure to As and other toxic metals in response to test results from the AAA project.
Discussion:
A school-based approach to collecting and analyzing private well water samples can successfully reach communities with low testing rates for toxic elements, such as As and other metals. Importantly, information generated through the program can impact household decision-making, and students can influence local and state policymaking by sharing information in their communities. https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP13421.
... This approach ensures that strategies are rooted in local contexts and priorities, significantly increasing their likelihood of success. Furthermore, participatory research is deeply committed to inclusivity and equity, allowing marginalized communities to actively shape waste management strategies (Davis and Ramí rez-Andreotta, 2021). By providing a platform for previously marginalized voices, it promotes social justice and fair distribution of benefits. ...
This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of community involvement in waste management through participatory research. Its objective is to bridge the theoretical underpinnings of participatory research with its practical implementation, particularly within the realm of waste management. The review systematically analyzes global instances where community engagement has been incorporated into waste management initiatives. Its principal aim is to evaluate the efficacy of participatory strategies by scrutinizing methodologies and assessing outcomes. To achieve this, the study identified 74 studies that met rigorous criteria through meticulous search efforts, encompassing various geographical locations, cultural contexts, and waste management challenges. In examining the outcomes of participatory research in waste management, the study explores successful practices, shortcomings, and potential opportunities. Moving beyond theoretical discourse, it provides a detailed analysis of real-world applications across various settings. The evaluation not only highlights successful engagement strategies and indicators but also critically assesses challenges and opportunities. By conducting a comprehensive review of existing research, this study establishes a foundation for future studies, policy development, and the implementation of sustainable waste management practices through community engagement. The overarching goal is to derive meaningful insights that contribute to a more inclusive, effective, and globally sustainable approach to waste management. This study seeks to inform policymaking and guide future research initiatives, emphasizing the importance of community involvement in addressing the complexities of waste management on a global scale.
... This distinction makes sense if we talk about territorial communities but loses distinctive capacity if we talk about relational communities. Consider, for example, the scientific community, which transcends geographies and nationalities (Davis & Ramírez-Andreotta, 2021;Khodyakov et al., 2013). Even when staying on the territorial level, studies hardly distinguish social participation and involvement from community forms. ...
Social engagement is changing considerably in its forms and objectives, and it is not always easy to understand this change. Engagement in the local community can be the link between social participation and personal commitment. The purpose of this research was to define and validate the local community engagement (LCE) construct that is the degree of involvement and participation in the local community. The LCE model has eight dimensions: local volunteering, participation in traditions, participation in sports events, local political participation, local activism, protest/NIMBY, community care, and informative participation. The sample comprised 530 individuals residing in a variety of towns/cities of different sizes in Italy. Confirmatory factor analyses and reliability and validity analyses confirmed the proposed model. Further analysis showed a strong relationship between LCE and place identity, sense of community, entitativity and political control.
... Like many sociotechnical problems, all of these contexts for AI tool use receive fair criticism both from societal and technical perspectives. Having in mind participatory research in the context of social and racial justice, literature presents works around environmental justice [12,21,35,39,46], social justice [14,26], equal access to wealth [13], and how social justice should move from colonial to more participatory practices [40]. ...
... The absence of details on community partners' role in interpreting Registry data highlights the need for more comprehensive partnerships to inform decisionmaking at the intersection of health and disasters [33•]. The limited examples of community engagement underscore the need to evaluate the most effective forms [58] and strategies for addressing distributive, procedural, and recognitional injustices related to flooding [18,59]. ...
Purpose of Review
This review applies an environmental justice perspective to synthesize knowledge of flood-related health disparities across demographic groups in the USA. The primary aim is to examine differential impacts on physical and mental health outcomes while also assessing methodological considerations such as flood exposure metrics, baseline health metrics, and community engagement.
Recent Findings
In our review (n = 27), 65% and 72% of studies identified racial, ethnic, or socio-economic disparities in physical and mental health outcomes post-flooding, respectively. The majority of racial/ethnic disparities were based on Black race, while most socio-economic disparities were based on lower household income. Forty-two percent of studies lacked flood exposure metrics, but often identified disparities. Common flood exposure metrics included self-reported flooding, flood risk models, and satellite-based observations. Seventy percent of studies lacked baseline health measurements or suitable alternatives, and only 19% incorporated community engagement into their research design.
Summary
The literature consistently finds that both physical and mental health burdens following flooding are unequally shared across racial, ethnic, and socio-economic groups. These findings emphasize the need for disaster risk reduction policies that address underlying vulnerabilities to flooding, unequal exposure to flooding, and progressive funding for recovery efforts. Findings also underscore the importance of methodological enhancements to facilitate precise assessments of flood exposure and health outcomes.
... In the field of environmental health, some countries such as the United States of America have already cumulated several decades of experience in conducting citizen science (CS) research (Brown, 1992;Morello-Frosch et al., 2009;O'Fallon and Dearry, 2002;Ohayon et al., 2023), thanks notably to regular support by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (Davis and Ramirez-Andreotta, 2021;NIEHS, 2023;O'Fallon and Dearry, 2001). Interest of various stakeholders for CS research projects in environmental health is also rapidly increasing in other countries (Froeling et al., 2024;Gignac et al., 2022;Ngo et al., 2017;OpenRadiation, 2023;Radicchi et al., 2017;Ripoll et al., 2019;Ardrey et al., 2016;Kumar and Mukherjee, 2016;Snik et al., 2014). ...
... The multiple, disproportionate, and cumulative impacts experienced by overburdened communities need to be addressed collectively through multidisciplinary efforts led by scientists in government, academia, industry, and non-governmental organizations. Community-based participatory science contributes to the development of qualitative and quantitative place-based information needed to inform exposure characterization [12]. A whole-ofscience approach is needed to inform decisions to reduce the stressors experienced by overburdened communities. ...
... According to Browne et al. (2019), policy studies can be traditional, mainstream, and interpretive. This research adopts an interpretive policy framework that focuses on the meanings and construction of policy issues, including assumptions affecting the problems and the data used for analysis linking literature reviews, narratives, or ethnographic methods (Bullock et al., 2021;Davis & Ramírez-Andreotta, 2021). Policy analysis follows procedures such as recognizing and defining issues to be approached, identifying evaluation criteria, and adopting and evaluating alternative policies to draft the best suitable implementation strategies (Patton & Sawicki, 1993;McGregor, 2018). ...
The Marshall Decision of Canada’s Supreme Court inspired the Mi’kmaq in the 1700s regarding recognizing fishing rights to the Mi’kmaq communities. Despite this recognition, the Mi’kmaq communities did not have access to commercial fisheries due to the denial of absolute recognition of territories and rights and underrepresentation and participation in resource allocation, governance, and decision-making processes. A potential approach to these issues is the development of third-party Indigenous community-based sustainability certification standards for the American lobster (Homarus americanus) commercial fishery of Nova Scotia by Mi’kmaq communities. An Indigenous certification is a market-based tool that focuses on a holistic approach to the sustainability of the resource, followed by independent accreditations and standards. This study identifies the gaps, challenges, and opportunities of Indigenous-based certifications for the American lobster commercial fishery. We adopt a participatory approach to conventional policy analysis and perform a secondary analysis of existing legal and scientific resources to glean valuable information for supporting the establishment of an Indigenous certification for the American lobster. Certification could provide benefits such as increased control over fisheries management, governance, rights, and socioeconomic interest, building capacity for Mi’kmaq communities, and improving stakeholder relationships. However, there are issues with the entry points of certification for Indigenous peoples related primarily to the dominant actors in accreditation. This study will support further research and engagement of the Mi’kmaq people toward developing an Indigenous certification scheme.
... While helpful, this inward focus has promoted a degree of instrumentalism in the field with much scholarship focusing on the 'ingredients' needed to achieve more effective engagement within discrete research partnerships funded to impact categorical health outcomes (21,29). While important, this approach underplays how contextual challenges impact the transparency, commitment, accountability, and efficiency of multiple stakeholders to advance strategies that achieve health equity transformation (35)(36)(37). Many of these challenges can be linked to power asymmetries that are manifested in multiple ways in PCOR/CEnR research and practice (21,36,(38)(39)(40)(41). ...
Community-based participatory research (CBPR) and community engaged research (CEnR) are key to promoting community and patient engagement in actionable evidence-based strategies to improve research for health equity. Rapid growth of CBPR/CEnR research projects have led to the broad adoption of partnering principles in community-academic partnerships and among some health and academic organizations. Yet, transformation of principles into best practices that foster trust, shared power, and equity outcomes still remain fragmented, are dependent on individuals with long term projects, or are non-existent. This paper describes how we designed our Engage for Equity PLUS intervention that leverages the leadership and membership of champion teams (including community-engaged faculty, community partners and patient advocates) to improve organizational policies and practices to support equity based CBPR/CEnR. This article describes the feasibility and preliminary findings from engaging champion teams from three very different academic health centers. We reflect on the learnings from Engage for Equity PLUS; the adaptation of the intervention design and implementation, including the development of a new institutional assessment using mixed research methods; and our organizational theory of change. In summary, our design and preliminary data from the three academic health centers provide support for new attention to the role of institutional practices and processes needed to sustain equity-based patient and community-engaged research and CBPR and transform the field.
... Practices led by institutions only have been critiqued for their lack of accessibility, diversity, justice, equity, and inclusion [187]. Community-based participatory research and community science efforts that champion placed-based topics and local experts and address community questions are strongly recommended and can increase the rigor and relevance of the effort (e.g., [187][188][189]). For example, Gardenroots [31,[190][191][192][193], established in 2010, revealed that in one community, the local water utility was serving water that exceeded the arsenic drinking water standard (0.010 mg L −1 ) [190]. ...
Arsenic is ubiquitous in soil and water environments and is consistently at the top of the Agency for Toxic Substances Disease Registry (ATSDR) substance priority list. It has been shown to induce toxicity even at low levels of exposure. One of the major routes of exposure to arsenic is through drinking water. This review presents current information related to the distribution of arsenic in the environment, the resultant impacts on human health, especially related to diabetes, which is one of the most prevalent chronic diseases, regulation of arsenic in drinking water, and approaches for treatment of arsenic in drinking water for both public utilities and private wells. Taken together, this information points out the existing challenges to understanding both the complex health impacts of arsenic and to implementing the treatment strategies needed to effectively reduce arsenic exposure at different scales.
... In response, community and citizen science efforts strive for community engagement to address environmental injustices (David-Chavez et al., 2020;Davis and Ramírez-Andreotta, 2021;Pandya, 2012). Community science is research stemming from the public to contribute to grassroots social action Pandya, 2012;Wilson et al., 2014); and, citizen science is research led by institutions involving the public in parts of the scientific process (Shirk et al., 2012). ...
As climate change exacerbates water scarcity, rainwater harvesting for household irrigation and gardening becomes an increasingly common practice. However, the use and quality of harvested rainwater are not well studied, and the potential pollutant exposures associated with its use are generally unknown. There are currently no federal standards in the United States to assess metal(loid)s in harvested rainwater. Project Harvest, a community science research project, was created to address this knowledge gap and study the quality of harvested rainwater, primarily used for irrigation, in four environmental justice communities in Arizona, USA. Community scientists collected 577 unique rooftop harvested rainwater samples from 2017 to 2020, which were analyzed for metal(loid)s, where arsenic (As) concentrations ranged from 0.108 to 120 μg L-1 and lead (Pb) concentrations ranged from 0.013 to 350 μg L-1 and compared to relevant federal/state standards/recommendations. Community As and Pb concentrations decreased as: Hayden/Winkelman > Tucson > Globe/Miami > Dewey-Humboldt. Linear mixed models were used to analyze rooftop harvested rainwater data and results indicated that concentrations of As and Pb in the summer monsoon were significantly greater than winter; and contamination was significantly greater closer to extractive industrial sites in three of the four study communities (ASARCO Hayden Plant Superfund Alternative site in Hayden/Winkelman, Davis-Monthan United States Air Force Base in Tucson - Pb only, and Freeport McMoRan Copper and Gold Mine in Globe/Miami). Based on models, infrastructure such as proximity to roadway, roof material, presence of a cistern screen, and first-flush systems were not significant with respect to As and Pb when controlling for relevant spatiotemporal variables; whereas, cistern age was associated with Pb concentrations. These results however, indicate that concentrations vary seasonally and by proximity to industrial activity, not by decisions made regarding collection system infrastructures at the individual home level. This study shows that generally, individuals are not responsible for environmental contamination of rooftop harvested rainwater, rather activities and decisions of government and corporate industries control contaminant release.
In this article, we aimed to evaluate the utility of critical posthumanism for nurses interested in planetary health—a growing area of study that requires a decentering of the human, and environmental justice considerations. We used Chinn and colleagues' method to describe and critically reflect on critical posthumanism, extending the theory analysis method to include a wide range of academic and video sources. We found that critical posthumanism is like a double‐edged sword: It provides a lens through which to transcend human‐centric approaches to healthcare but is marred by its lack of clarity and inaccessibility. We argue critical posthumanism can be adapted to enhance its potential at the intersection of nursing and planetary health. An analysis of critical posthumanism is followed by a discussion framed by five ways of knowing in nursing, highlighting real‐world examples of how critical posthumanism can aid nurses in dealing with planetary health concerns. By exploring the intersections of critical posthumanism with nursing knowledge, we demonstrate how critical posthumanism can enable nurses to comprehend and tackle environmental issues intricately linked to human health.
Air pollution poses significant health risks, exacerbating asthma and adversely affecting respiratory and cardiovascular systems, while increasing the likelihood of heart disease and stroke. Marginalized populations, often in underprivileged communities, frequently experience disproportionate exposure to toxins due to socioeconomic inequalities. The concepts in health and environmental justice that concerns air quality involve equity vs. equality, the cumulative impact of environmental and social stressors, participatory approaches in environmental decision-making, and the preventive and precautionary principle. Strategies rooted in environmental justice and health seek to rectify these disparities by advocating for a fair distribution of environmental benefits and adverse burdens. This chapter focuses on Health and Environmental Justice Strategies for Mitigating Air Pollution. The strategies, which have their origins in the civil rights movements, strive to ensure universal access to clean air and a healthy environment, regardless of financial status. These efforts often employ various tactics, including health impact assessments that integrate health considerations into decision-making processes for policies and programs. Cumulative risk assessments often evaluate compounded risks from multiple sources, guiding the prioritization of interventions in high-risk areas. Social determinants of health theory often inform strategies by addressing factors influencing susceptibility to pollution exposure. Participatory action research often empowers communities to advocate for tailored solutions, enhancing environmental conditions collaboratively. Climate justice frameworks can link climate change mitigation with improved air quality, advocating for equitable distribution of benefits. The precautionary principle guides proactive measures in uncertain situations to protect public health amidst evolving scientific understanding. Therefore, effective strategies involve implementing energy-saving practices, promoting sustainable transportation, and enhancing urban green spaces to mitigate air pollution. Also, policies should ensure equitable access to clean air, enforce stricter emissions regulations, and prioritize renewable energy sources. Integrated health and environmental justice measures can foster resilient and equitable communities by addressing the main causes of air pollution and minimizing immediate health impacts.
Air pollution, the presence of harmful or excessive concentrations of pollutants in the Earth’s atmosphere, results in severe health impacts, including respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, lung cancer, asthma, and premature death especially among vulnerable populations such as children, the elderly, and individuals with preexisting health conditions. It also affects ecosystems, leading to biodiversity loss, damage to vegetation, soil degradation, and contamination of water bodies. Given the significant health and environmental impacts of air pollution, the implementation of effective mitigation strategies is crucial. Despite growing awareness of the detrimental effects of air pollution, several challenges hinder efforts to achieve sustainable clean air. The chapter aims to explore sustainable strategies for mitigating air pollution and promoting cleaner, healthier environments. It examines various aspects of air pollution, including its sources, impacts, and mitigation measures, with a focus on sustainability and long-term solutions. The chapter highlights the roles of policy and governance frameworks, technological innovations, behavioral changes, sustainable urban planning, industrial and agricultural practices, climate change mitigation, and economic and social considerations to inform and inspire action toward achieving cleaner air and healthier communities. Efforts to address air pollution require both local and regional interventions and global cooperation. Promoting the use of renewable energy sources, such as solar, wind, and hydroelectric power, will reduce the use and reliance on fossil fuels and decrease emissions from power generation. In the same way, the implementation of pollution prevention and control measures in industries will help minimize emissions of pollutants such as sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, particulate matter, and volatile organic compounds. More investment in public transportation infrastructure, the use of electric and hybrid vehicles, and clear emission standards will reduce emissions from transportation sources. National governments also need to establish monitoring networks, enforcement mechanisms, and reporting requirements to track air quality levels, assess compliance with regulatory standards, and take corrective actions to address noncompliance. Education and outreach play a pivotal role in raising awareness about air pollution issues and empowering individuals to act.
Environmental health literacy (EHL) is a rather recent concept that applies health literacy skills to environmental issues. Research in this field is still at the beginning, and there is currently no existing tool in the literature designed to comprehensively assess individual general EHL among university students. The aim of our study is to fill this gap through the validation of the Environmental Health Literacy Index (EHLI) in such a target group. We adapted a previously administered survey, originally completed by 4778 university students from various Italian universities. Starting from the original questionnaire, our methodology involved a three-round item selection process, followed by a comprehensive evaluation of the instrument’s psychometric properties. The EHLI consists of 13 Likert-type items, covering three primary domains of health literacy: functional (six items), interactive (three items), and critical (four items). The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient is 0.808 for the global scale, while it stands at 0.888 for the functional, 0.795 for the critical, and 0.471 for the interactive components. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve reached a value of 0.643. Spearman correlation analysis revealed a significant yet slight correlation between EHLI and both functional health literacy score and the extent of pro-environmental behaviors adoption. Our study serves as an important initial step in developing a tool able to evaluate the EHL of university-aged individuals. Further research efforts may improve the questionnaire’s validity and completeness, as well as to explore its applicability to different age groups.
Executive Summary
Low-cost air quality sensor systems (LCS) are a key emerging class of technologies for expanding policy-relevant air quality analysis, including assessing levels of pollution, identifying sources, and producing forecasts.
An LCS contains one or more sensing elements together with hardware and software for control, power supply, data management, and weatherproofing, constituting a complete system capable of collecting atmospheric composition data.
The “low cost” of LCS refers to their per-unit capital cost in relation to more traditional reference grade monitors (RGM). However, technical trade-offs which enable this lower cost usually also limit data quality, selectivity, sensitivity to low concentrations, robustness under high concentrations, and/or operational lifetime compared to RGM. These properties also vary across LCS technologies and measured pollutants, i.e. gases or particles. The necessary calibration and data quality control processes needed to establish confidence in LCS data, together with the infrastructure and personnel needed to support networks with multiple LCS in a region, can significantly add to their initial costs.
Despite these challenges, LCS represent a key tool for filling gaps in existing global and local air quality monitoring networks and contributing information for policy-relevant air quality products. In recent years, wide-scale deployments of LCS have been made in low- and middle-income countries, where they often provide air quality information in regions lacking RGM networks, as well as in high-income countries, where they typically supplement existing RGM with more localized near real-time air quality information.
The aim of the present document is to discuss the use of LCS at a network level and along with other information sources to analyse levels, variations, sources, and other aspects of air quality. This application perspective complements the series of World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reports on low-cost sensors for the measurement of atmospheric composition published in 2018 and 2020. These previous WMO reports focus on operating principles for the use of LCS in measuring different constituents, best practices for calibration, performance assessment, and strategies for communicating LCS data to the public.
We examine the intersection of participatory science, social justice, and higher education in the United States to investigate how instructors can teach about social justice and enhance collaborations to work toward enacting social justice.
Large-scale socioeconomic vulnerability models commonly used in flood hazard assessments grapple with data limitations and struggle to fully capture diversity in vulnerability and resilience stemming from America’s sociopolitical history. In response, we developed a prototype for a place-based Flood Resilience Assessment Index (FRAI) using tract-level geographies that illustrates human-centric frameworks for quantifying flood resilience in the U.S. For these purposes, we define flood resilience as the likelihood a tract will rebound from a flood disaster. This framework can be used in tandem with flood risk models. We employ mixed methods in geospatial processing, including dasymetric interpolation and network analysis to model access. We also standardize variables by percentage to enable temporal analyses and equity-centered narrative framing. While the resulting scores for a five-county pilot study correlate with those of leading vulnerability indices, FRAI leverages diverse data sources and novel methods to represent the changing landscapes, resources, and needs of urban cores and growing suburbs. Future trajectories for FRAI will continue to define and refine methods for diverse datasets, employ participatory methods for emergency managers and residents of flood-prone communities in value-setting, weighting, and validation, and identify policy and practice avenues.
This chapter reviews the research within science and health reporting on non-dominant ethnic and racial groups around the world, among other disadvantaged populations, focusing on disparities between health outcomes and how news outlets report on those groups. It describes the intent of inclusive journalism and the factors that limit inclusive journalism being fully achieved. In reviewing the available literature, this chapter discusses the lack of representation and inclusion in academic research as much as in journalism and outlines a future research agenda.
Needs and Opportunities for High Spatial Resolution Measurements to Support Community-Focused Research, with a focus on air pollutant emissions and air quality, and applications to inform decisions that advance environmental justice. The presentation addresses several themes:
* Identify problems that matter to communities
* Work with communities to characterize the problems and
potential solutions
* Fit-for-purpose measurements
* Solutions-driven research
* “Bias toward action”
As climate change increases the frequency and severity of wildfires across the Western U.S., there is an urgent need for improved wildfire preparedness and responses. Socially marginalized communities are particularly vulnerable to wildfire effects because they disproportionately lack access to the resources necessary to prepare for and recover from wildfire and are frequently underrepresented in the wildfire planning process. As an exemplar of how to understand and improve preparedness in such communities, this research identified communities in Ventura County facing heightened marginalization and risk of wildfire using spatial analysis. Researchers then deployed a county-wide survey and held focus groups in two communities identified in the spatial analysis. Research revealed that non-English speakers, women, people of color, and newer residents in Ventura County are less prepared for wildfire than other groups. Based on these findings, this paper recommends an expansion of traditional risk mitigation programs, strengthened community engagement efforts, and strategies that increase community resources and leadership to decouple marginalization and wildfire vulnerability.
What happens when academics, who “conceptualise research questions”, and community groups, which aim to be “doing things”, collaborate? Building on STS research about collaboration, we focus on the collaborative experiences of three teams of academics and community groups to address environmental justice. Our research reveals a tension between the way two sets of actors understand the purpose and mode of science within environmental justice collaborations. We explain this tension by exploring the motivations of the academics and community group managers and by how team members arrived at a shared understanding of collaboration itself. Our findings reveal that the purpose and mode of science within the collaborations that unfolded can best be understood not as conceptualizing research questions or doing things, but rather as “conceptualizing doing things.” Recognizing this merged understanding of science could be beneficial in enhancing and accelerating the work of community group-academic collaborations labouring together to address environmental justice challenges.
Background:
Due to the physical, metabolic, and hormonal changes before, during, and after pregnancy, women-defined here as people assigned female at birth-are particularly susceptible to environmental insults. Racism, a driving force of social determinants of health, exacerbates this susceptibility by affecting exposure to both chemical and nonchemical stressors to create women's health disparities.
Objectives:
To better understand and address social and structural determinants of women's health disparities, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) hosted a workshop focused on the environmental impacts on women's health disparities and reproductive health in April 2022. This commentary summarizes foundational research and unique insights shared by workshop participants, who emphasized the need to broaden the definition of the environment to include upstream social and structural determinants of health. We also summarize current challenges and recommendations, as discussed by workshop participants, to address women's environmental and reproductive health disparities.
Discussion:
The challenges related to women's health equity, as identified by workshop attendees, included developing research approaches to better capture the social and structural environment in both human and animal studies, integrating environmental health principles into clinical care, and implementing more inclusive publishing and funding approaches. Workshop participants discussed recommendations in each of these areas that encourage interdisciplinary collaboration among researchers, clinicians, funders, publishers, and community members. https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP12996.
Environmental justice research is increasingly focused on community-engaged, participatory investigations that test interventions to improve health. Such research is primed for the use of implementation science–informed approaches to optimize the uptake and use of interventions proven to be effective. This review identifies synergies between implementation science and environmental justice with the goal of advancing both disciplines. Specifically, the article synthesizes the literature on neighborhood-, community-, and policy-level interventions in environmental health that address underlying structural determinants (e.g., structural racism) and social determinants of health. Opportunities to facilitate and scale the equitable implementation of evidence-based environmental health interventions are highlighted, using urban greening as an illustrative example. An environmental justice–focused version of the implementation science subway is provided, which highlights these principles: Remember and Reflect, Restore and Reclaim, and Reinvest. The review concludes with existing gaps and future directions to advance the science of implementation to promote environmental justice.
Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Public Health, Volume 45 is April 2024. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
Over multiple years, we developed and conducted a community-based participatory health study in the industrial zone of Marseille, France. We focused on documenting health issues among residents living in two towns in the industrial core and one town on the periphery that had a larger agricultural sector and an identical transportation/logistics sector. Our study, called EPSEAL (Etude Participative de Santé Environment Ancrée Localement; Locally-Anchored Participatory Study of Environmental Health in English), was designed to answer residents’ questions about the health experiences of living in industrial zones. Our multidisciplinary Franco-American team conducted health surveys in these three towns and held focus groups with residents and other stakeholders to discuss the findings. The main social impacts we achieved included: 1) empowerment of local residents with evidence they could use for advocating for health interventions; 2) substantial media coverage that drew regional, national, and international attention to the scope of the issue; 3) policy and regulatory changes; and 4) interest from other French communities for conducting similar community-driven health studies. Our study demonstrates that there is substantial interest among residents in doing participatory studies that answer their questions about health. Additionally we show that collaboratively produced, epidemiologically rigorous studies have substantial social and policy impacts.
The history of environmental justice litigation in federal, state, and administrative courts illustrates how difficult it is to remedy intersectional harm using a single legal tool. In the United States, there is no federal “environmental justice law” that litigants can wield in court. The movement has instead attempted to harness constitutional and civil rights claims, environmental statutes, and common law to address the disproportionate environmental harm suffered by communities of color and under-resourced communities. However, the architects of those laws did not design them to combat environmental injustice, and litigation thereunder rarely provides communities with complete redress. While advocates have pursued multi-faceted approaches with some success, the arc of environmental justice litigation highlights the need for an expansion of existing law or new approaches to address the entrenched harms that characterize environmental racism and injustice.
This Chapter introduces readers to environmental justice and explains why litigation has been a lever of limited utility to advance the movement’s goals in the last several decades. It surveys the historical application of different types of laws that advocates have employed in cases seeking environmental justice. The Chapter also highlights the non-litigation value lawsuits can provide from the perspective of movement organizing strategies. Finally, it identifies recent successful efforts as well as new setbacks and explores how novel legal developments could reshape the horizon of environmental justice litigation.
Introduction
The ‘SCale-Up diaBetes and hYpertension care’ Project aims to support the scale-up of integrated care for diabetes and hypertension in Cambodia, Slovenia and Belgium through the co-creation, implementation and evaluation of contextualised roadmaps. These roadmaps offer avenues for action and are built on evidence as well as stakeholder engagement in policy dialogues. Roadmaps and policy dialogues are very much intertwined and considered to be key elements for successful stakeholder-supported scale-up in integrated chronic care. Yet, little is known about how, why and under which conditions policy dialogue leads to successful roadmap implementation and scale-up of integrated care. Therefore, this study aims to use a realist approach to elicit an initial programme theory (IPT), using political science theories on the policy process.
Methods
To develop the IPT, information from different sources was collected. First, an exploratory literature review on policy dialogue and scale-up definitions and success factors was performed, identifying theoretical frameworks, empirical (case) studies and realist studies (information gleaning). Second, research workshops on applying theory to the roadmap for scale-up (theory gleaning) were conducted with a multidisciplinary expert team. We used the intervention–context–actors–mechanism–outcome configuration to synthesise information from the sources into a configurational map.
Results
The information and theory gleaning resulted into an IPT, hypothesising how policy dialogues can contribute to roadmap success in different policy stages. The IPT draws on political science theory of the multiple streams model adapted by Howlett et al to include five streams (problem, solution, politics, process and programme) that can emerge, converge and diverge across all five policy stages.
Conclusion
This paper aims to extend the knowledge base on the use of policy dialogues to build a roadmap for scale-up. The IPT describes how (dynamics) and why (theories) co-created roadmaps are expected to work in different policy stages.
Floods impact communities worldwide, resulting in an estimated $651 billion (USD) in damages, countless fatalities, and threatened livelihoods over the last two decades alone. Climate change and urban development in flood-prone areas will continue to worsen flood-related losses increasing the urgency for effective tools to monitor recovery. Many Earth Observation (EO) applications exist for flood-hazard monitoring and provide insights on location, timing, and extent in near real-time and historically to estimate flood risk. Less attention has been paid to flood recovery, even though differing recovery rates and outcomes can have immediate and enduring effects within communities. Here, we define post-flood recovery as a change in land cover types, conditions, or land surface features in the days, weeks, months, or years following a flood event. EO data are uniquely positioned to monitor post-flood recovery and inform policy on hazard mitigation and adaptation but remain underutilized. We urge the EO and flood research community to renew focus on developing flood recovery applications to address growing flood risk. Both methodological innovations and translation of EO insights on flood recovery among flood-affected communities and decision-makers are necessary to address underlying vulnerabilities in social systems that exacerbate flooding. We identify an unequivocal need for EO to move beyond hazard mapping to post-flood recovery monitoring to inform recovery across geographic contexts. This commentary proposes a framework to use EO to advance flood recovery monitoring, characterize inequitable recovery, redistribute resources to mitigate inequities, and support risk reduction of future floods.
Social, political, and cultural complexities observed in environmental justice (EJ) communities require new forms of investigation, science teaching, and communication. Defined broadly, participatory approaches can challenge and change inequity and mistrust in science. Here, we describe Project Harvest and the partnership building and co‐generation of knowledge alongside four EJ communities in Arizona. From 2017 to 2021, Project Harvest centered learning around these communities and the participant experience drove the data sharing practice. The framework of sense‐making is used to analyze how community scientists (CS) are learning within the context of environmental pollution and (in)justice. The environmental health literacy (EHL) framework is applied to document the acquisition of skills that enable protective decision‐making and the capacity of CS to move along the EHL continuum. Using data from surveys, focus groups, and semi‐structured interviews, we are asking how did: (1) Personal connections and local relevancy fuel sense‐making? (2) Data sharing make pollution visible and connect to historical knowledge to either reinforce or modify their existing mental map around pollution? and (3) The co‐creation process build data literacy and a relationship science? Results indicate that due to the program framing, CS personally connected with, and made sense of their data based on use and experience. CS synthesized and connected their pollution history and lived experiences with their data and evaluated contaminant transport. CS saw themselves as part of the process, are taking what they learned and the evidence they helped produce to adopt protective environmental health measures and are applying these skills to new contexts. Here, co‐created science nurtured a new/renewed relationship with science. This science culture rooted in co‐creation, fosters action, trust, and supports ongoing science engagement. The science learning that stems from co‐created efforts can set the pace for social transformation and provide the foundation for structural change.
Background:
Communities who experience disproportionate environmental exposures and associated adverse health outcomes have long been aware of, and worked to draw attention to, the role of racism in shaping those risks. A growing number of researchers are focusing on racism as a fundamental driver of racial inequities in environmental health. Importantly, several research and funding institutions have publicly committed to addressing structural racism within their organizations. These commitments highlight structural racism as a social determinant of health. They also invite reflection on antiracist approaches to community engagement in environmental health research.
Objectives:
We discuss strategies for taking more explicitly antiracist approaches to community engagement in environmental health research.
Discussion:
Antiracist (as opposed to nonracist, color-blind, or race-neutral) frameworks entail thinking or acting in ways that explicitly question, analyze, and challenge policies and practices that produce or sustain inequities between racial groups. Community engagement is not inherently antiracist. There are, however, opportunities for extending antiracist approaches when engaging communities who are disproportionately harmed by environmental exposures. Those opportunities include a) promoting leadership and decision-making power by representatives from harmed communities, b) centering community priorities in identifying new research areas, and c) translating research into action by applying knowledge from multiple sources to disrupt policies and practices that create and sustain environmental injustices. https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP11384.
Transportation infrastructure decisions contribute to social, economic, and health inequities in the U.S. Health Impact Assessments (HIAs) may improve understanding of potential strategies to mitigate adverse effects on quality of life from planned developments. We use the Gordie Howe International Bridge (GHIB), currently under construction in southwest Detroit, MI, as a case study to examine 15 years of community mobilization, which resulted in community benefits that included an HIA. We describe community engagement processes, household survey methods, and select findings of the baseline HIA, with a focus on their application to inform recommendations to promote quality of life. Baseline HIA results indicated significantly higher self-reported asthma rates among children living within 500 feet of trucking routes. Residents reported substantial economic (e.g., decreased home values), health (e.g., adverse outcomes, lack of health care access), and environmental (e.g., air pollution) concerns related to the GHIB. We discuss specific recommendations, based on HIA results, to reduce adverse impacts of the GHIB. These recommendations will inform ongoing community benefits negotiations. This case study provides lessons for community, academic, and government partners conducting HIAs, especially during building and operation of major infrastructure, and discusses their potential role in improving community engagement opportunities towards environmental justice.
In recent decades, there has been remarkable growth in scholarship examining the usefulness of community-engaged research (CEnR) and community-based participatory research (CBPR) for eliminating health inequities. This article seeks to synthesize the extant literature of systematic reviews, scoping reviews, and other related reviews regarding the context, processes, and research designs and interventions underlying CEnR that optimize its effectiveness. Through a scoping review, we have utilized an empirically derived framework of CBPR to map this literature and identify key findings and priorities for future research. Our study found 100 reviews of CEnR that largely support the CBPR conceptual framework.
Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Public Health, Volume 41 is April 1, 2020. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
Background. Community-based participatory research (CBPR) is increasingly used by community and academic partners to examine health inequities and promote health equity in communities. Despite increasing numbers of CBPR partnerships, there is a lack of consensus in the field regarding what defines partnership success and how to measure factors contributing to success in long-standing CBPR partnerships. Aims. To identify indicators and measures of success in long-standing CBPR partnerships as part of a larger study whose aim is to develop and validate an instrument measuring success across CBPR partnerships. Methods. The Joanna Briggs Institute framework and Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guided searches of three databases (PubMed, CINAHL, Scopus) for articles published between 2007 and 2017 and evaluating success in CBPR partnerships existing longer than 4 years. Results. Twenty-six articles met search criteria. We identified 3 key domains and 7 subdomains with 28 underlying indicators of success. Six partnerships developed or used instruments to measure their success; only one included reliability or validity data. Discussion. CBPR partnerships reported numerous intersecting partner, partnership, and outcome indicators important for success. These results, along with data from key informant interviews with community and academic partners and advisement from a national panel of CBPR experts, will inform development of items for an instrument measuring CBPR partnership success. Conclusion. The development of a validated instrument measuring indicators of success will allow long-standing CBPR partnerships to evaluate their work toward achieving health equity and provide a tool for newly forming CBPR partnerships aiming to achieve long-term success.
Background and objectives:
The last decade has witnessed increased recognition of the value of literature reviews for advancing understanding and decision making. This has been accompanied by an expansion in the range of methodological approaches and types of review. However, there remains uncertainty over definitions and search requirements beyond those for the 'traditional' systematic review. This study aims to characterise health related reviews by type and to provide recommendations on appropriate methods of information retrieval based on the available guidance.
Methods:
A list of review types was generated from published typologies and categorised into 'families' based on their common features. Guidance on information retrieval for each review type was identified by searching pubmed, medline and Google Scholar, supplemented by scrutinising websites of review producing organisations.
Results:
Forty-eight review types were identified and categorised into seven families. Published guidance reveals increasing specification of methods for information retrieval; however, much of it remains generic with many review types lacking explicit requirements for the identification of evidence.
Conclusions:
Defining review types and utilising appropriate search methods remain challenging. By familiarising themselves with a range of review methodologies and associated search methods, information specialists will be better equipped to select suitable approaches for future projects.
While structural factors may drive health inequities, certain health-promoting attributes of one’s “place” known as salutogens may further moderate the cumulative impacts of exposures to socio-environmental stressors that behave as pathogens. Understanding the synergistic relationship between socio-environmental stressors and resilience factors is a critical component in reducing health inequities; however, the catalyst for this concept relies on community-engaged research approaches to ultimately strengthen resiliency and promote health. Furthermore, this concept has not been fully integrated into environmental justice and cumulative risk assessment screening tools designed to identify geospatial variability in environmental factors that may be associated with health inequities. As a result, we propose a hybrid resiliency-stressor conceptual framework to inform the development of environmental justice and cumulative risk assessment screening tools that can detect environmental inequities and opportunities for resilience in vulnerable populations. We explore the relationship between actual exposures to socio-environmental stressors, perceptions of stressors, and one’s physiological and psychological stress response to environmental stimuli, which collectively may perpetuate health inequities by increasing allostatic load and initiating disease onset. This comprehensive framework expands the scope of existing screening tools to inform action-based solutions that rely on community-engaged research efforts to increase resiliency and promote positive health outcomes.
Entangled in complex ecological, sociocultural, and economic systems, current environmental health problems require integrated participatory approaches. Alpuyeca, a semi-urban, highly marginalized community in South-Central Mexico burdened by lead and polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) contamination, dengue fever, and intestinal diseases, illustrates this. Its residents are distinctive, however, for their concerted actions in the face of environmental problems and the presence of defenders of a prehispanic worldview based on the protection of nature. This article addresses the health impacts of an integrated environmental health promotion strategy implemented through a participatory action research intervention based on qualitative and quantitative methods. Different actors, sectors, dimensions, and knowledge types were harmonized in a collaborative space created specifically for our interdisciplinary research team, community residents and local authorities. Reflections, plans and actions were developed collectively in this space with the view of finding solutions anchored in the local culture. Results included sharp reductions in blood-lead concentrations among children, in entomological indices, and in PCB contamination, as well as capacity strengthening. Medium-level community participation was achieved. This work contributes evidence that participatory environmental health research can be effective in analyzing and reducing problems in communities with multiple environmental health concerns. It complements ecohealth and environmental health literacy approaches.
The adage “time is money” signifies that time itself is a major social resource, but the role of time as a determinant of health inequities remains underappreciated. Time is fundamental to health promotion and human agency, as in having time to exercise and maintain social relationships. Further, scarcity in time is related to stress and illness.
Time is also racialized, such that racial/ethnic minorities often have less free time and suffer a time penalty in multiple facets of life. Such penalties manifest in problems such as greater time in prison or more time spent accessing services.
We argue that time may be a social determinant of health that is shaped by racism across the life course. We focus on three aspects: time as age, time as exposure, and time as a resource and privilege. We distinguish between chronological age, biological age, and social age. We discuss issues of accelerated aging and potential interconnections with critical periods. We also examine racial inequities in time. By more deeply considering time, we may advance our understanding of racial inequities in health.
In this chapter, we use a metalogue format to discuss the possibilities of engaging in activist oriented scholarship as critically engaged scholar/activists. We draw upon our experiences to think about what this type of engagement means both on personal and individualized levels as well as in the broader context of being/becoming activists and critical scholars within a field – science education – that has little history of supporting this type of work. Each of us has chosen to engage with activism as a methodological and theoretical approach to working within and for schools as science educators. We will narrow our focus in this chapter to consider and creatively re/imagine the following research practices: (1) Positionality: What are our own social, political, and gendered/classed/racialized roles as we conduct research within economically oppressed communities?; (2) Public: What are our responsibilities to the communities in which we work and to the broader public?; and (3) Rigor: How do we (re)define rigor as a measure of transformative impact with the communities with whom we research? This metalogue will contribute to critical perspectives on research and research relationships in science education.
Cumulative risk assessment (CRA) has been proposed as a means of evaluating possible additive and synergistic effects of multiple chemical, physical and social stressors on human health, with the goal of informing policy and decision-making, and protecting public health. Routine application of CRA to environmental regulatory and policy decision making, however, has been limited due to a perceived lack of appropriate quantitative approaches for assessing combined effects of chemical and nonchemical exposures. Seven research projects, which represented a variety of disciplines, including population health science, laboratory science, social sciences, geography, statistics and mathematics, were funded by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to help address this knowledge gap. We synthesize key insights from these unique studies to determine the implications for CRA practice and priorities for further research. Our analyses of these seven projects demonstrate that the necessary analytical methods to support CRA are available but are ultimately context-dependent. These projects collectively provided advancements for CRA in the areas of community engagement, characterization of exposures to nonchemical stressors, and assessment of health effects associated with joint exposures to chemical and psychosocial stressors.
This paper aims to deepen current understandings of the ways in which historical power differentials and stigmatization shape the injustices faced by urban Roma populations. It argues, firstly that spatial segregation cannot be analytically separated from social and environmental factors that marginalize and disempower this vulnerable community; and secondly, that a multi-scalar approach is necessary to capture the ways in which stigmatization acts both within the affected community, and at the levels of local policy, national policy, and wider culture. The authors then consider the advantages and the pitfalls of using participatory processes to empower Roma segregated communities, drawing on the experience of a participatory action research process carried out over an eight-year period in the city of Szeged, Hungary. The findings suggest that it is necessary to be attentive to the paradoxes, dilemmas, and conflicts that surround the attempt to empower a highly stigmatized group as citizens, in a culture where exclusion and racism still dominate. The conclusions call for a comprehensive raft of policy measures to tackle Roma stigmatization, and for a continuous process of reflection on the moral and practical problems associated with participation in a context where power differentials still dominate.
Gardenroots: A Citizen Science Project (2015) is the product of a needs assessment, revealing environmental quality concerns of gardeners living near hazardous waste or resource extraction activities. Participants were trained, collected garden samples for analysis, and later received their data visualized (individual and aggregated) via community events or mail. This article describes participant motivations, changes in knowledge and efficacy, and whether these depend on the mode of data sharing and visualization. Motivations were internal, and self-efficacy increased, while knowledge and satisfaction were higher in event attendees due to increased researcher contact. This reveals importance of data-sharing events, data visualizations, and participatory research processes.
Purpose
Participatory action research can improve scientific knowledge and community capacity to address disaster resilience and environmental justice. Evidence from the literature suggests that resident participation enhances assessment of environmental risks, raises awareness and empowers residents to fight for equitable distribution of hazard and climate risk adaptations. Yet, risk assessment and urban planning processes still frequently operate within expertise-driven groups without significant community engagement. Such fragmentation results in part from a lack of appreciation for community expertise in built environment adaptations and educational tools to support resident involvement in the often technical built environment planning processes.
Design/methodology/approach
A participatory research and place-based education project was developed that enhanced co-learning between residents and researchers while collecting and analyzing local data on flood resilience in the built environment. Five research activities constitute the curriculum of resilience education on stormwater infrastructure: establishment of partnership agreement/memorandum of understanding, participatory GIS to identify flooding issues, water quality testing and health survey, stormwater infrastructure assessment and urban/landscape design. Partners included high school and college students, residents and environmental justice organizations.
Findings
Outcomes include a stakeholder-approved infrastructure assessment smartphone application, neighborhood maps of drainage issues, a report of water containments and neighborhood-scaled green infrastructure provisions and growth plans. Findings indicate that participatory research positively contributed to resilience knowledge of participants.
Originality/value
This paper outlines an interdisciplinary pedagogical strategy for resilience planning that engages residents to assess and monitor the performance of stormwater infrastructure and create resilience plans. The paper also discusses challenges and opportunities for similar participatory projects.
When the Deepwater Horizon oil rig blew out in 2010, the immediate threats to productive deep water and estuarial fisheries and the region’s fishing and energy economies were obvious. Less immediately obvious, but equally unsettling, were risks to human health posed by potential damage to the regional food web. This paper describes grassroots and regional efforts by the Gulf Coast Health Alliance: health risks related to the Macondo Spill Fishermen’s Citizen Science Network project. Using a community-based participatory research approach and a citizen science structure, the multiyear project measured exposure to petrogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, researched the toxicity of these polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon compounds, and communicated project findings and seafood consumption guidelines throughout the region (coastal Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama). Description/analysis focuses primarily on the process of building a network of working fishermen and developing group environmental health literacy competencies.
Background:
Communicating results to participants is a fundamental component of community-based participatory research (CBPR). However, in environmental exposure studies this is not always practiced, partly due to ethical concerns of communicating results that have unknown clinical significance.
Methods:
Growing Up Healthy was a community-based participatory research study that sought to understand the relationship between environmental exposures to phthalates and early puberty in young girls. After in-depth consultation with a Community Advisory Board, study investigators provided group summary results of phthalate exposures and related health information to the parents of study participants. Parents' comprehension and knowledge of the health information provided was then assessed through questionnaires.
Results:
After receiving the information from the research team, responders were able to correctly answer comprehension questions about phthalate exposures in their community, were able to identify ways to reduce exposure to phthalates, and indicated plans to do so. Questionnaires revealed that parents wanted more information on phthalates, and that children's environmental health was an important concern.
Conclusions:
We conclude that effective communication of exposure results of unknown clinical significance to participants in environmental health studies can be achieved by providing group summary results and actionable health information. Results suggest that there was an improvement in knowledge of environmental health and in risk reduction behaviors in our study population.
Household waste has evolved into a core urban challenge, with increased quantities of waste being generated and with more complex material compositions, often containing toxic and hazardous elements. Critical systems theory understands cities as urban metabolisms, with different material and energy flows, highlighting the circularity in production, consumption, and discard. Waste pickers in low- and medium-income countries work on dumps and landfills, sifting through highly contaminated household waste and are exposed to health hazards. This paper discusses the risk factors, hazards, and vulnerabilities waste pickers are exposed to during collection and separation of recyclables, based on the review of literature on waste and environmental health and on findings from participatory research with waste pickers conducted in Brazil. We take a social and environmental justice perspective and identify the vulnerabilities and waste-borne hazards of household waste, associated with these workers, their communities, watersheds, and the environment. Household waste, although not always per se toxic or hazardous, can become a hazard if not collected or inadequately managed. Those communities where household waste is not collected or waste collection is insufficient are the most critical places. Informal and organized waste pickers, municipal or private waste collectors/workers, small waste traders and sometimes residents, particularly small children, may be considered vulnerable if exposed to waste-borne hazards. The results include recommendations to address household waste-borne hazards and vulnerabilities, according to waste workers involved in this research.
Few studies have evaluated the benefits of reporting back participatory environmental monitoring results, particularly regarding participant motivation toward behavioural modification concerning workplace heat exposure. This study evaluated the individual data report-back for geo-located environmental temperature and time activity patterns in grounds maintenance crews in three geographic regions across the South-eastern United States. Surveys collected information on worker interpretation of their results and intended action(s) to reduce heat exposure. Worker response was highly positive, especially among more experienced workers who expressed a greater willingness to modify personal behaviour to reduce heat stress. Individual-level report-back of environmental data is a powerful tool for individuals to understand and act on their personal exposure to heat.
Citizen science provides quantitative results to support environmental health assessments (EHAs), but standardized approaches do not currently exist to translate findings into actionable solutions. The emergence of low-cost portable sensor technologies and proliferation of publicly available datasets provides unparalleled access to supporting evidence; yet data collection, analysis, interpretation, visualization, and communication are subjective approaches that must be tailored to a decision-making audience capable of improving environmental health. A decade of collaborative efforts and two citizen science projects contributed to three lessons learned and a set of frequently asked questions (FAQs) that address the complexities of environmental health and interpersonal relations often encountered in citizen science EHAs. Each project followed a structured step-by-step process in order to compare and contrast methods and approaches. These lessons and FAQs provide advice to translate citizen science research into actionable solutions in the context of a diverse range of environmental health issues and local stakeholders.
We employ infrastructuring as a verb to highlight contested processes of infrastructure expansion to extract, store, transport, and transform natural gas (into liquefied natural gas, LNG). As faculty members and students embedded in mid-Atlantic universities in the United States (US), we conducted participatory action research to record nearby infrastructuring for Dominion Energy's Cove Point LNG Export Terminal and Atlantic Coast Pipeline. We documented how frontline and impacted populations seized opportunities when infrastructuring was visible to challenge and erode the excessive economic and political power of Dominion, one of the US's largest energy providers, who sought to maintain regulatory privilege through lobbying, campaign contributions, and delegitimization of public health and environmental risks. Extending Tsing's concept of frictions (i.e., engagement in difference-based encounters), we highlight (1) coalition-building among unlikely allies (collective encounters), and (2) conflictive interactions between proand anti-gas stakeholders (oppositional encounters). Impacted populations collaborated with proximate and distant allies to publicize and legally challenge distributional, regulatory, racial and other forms of injustice from gas infrastructuring. Our critical energy justice (CEJ) framework helps to identity and defend interconnected components of justice under threat due to profit-oriented global gas infrastructuring based upon reckless disregard for climate science and public health.
We utilized a participatory mapping approach to collect point locations, photographs, and descriptive data about select built environment stressors identified and prioritized by community residents living in the Proctor Creek Watershed, a degraded, urban watershed in Northwest Atlanta, Georgia. Residents (watershed researchers) used an indicator identification framework to select three watershed stressors that influence urban livability: standing water, illegal dumping on land and in surface water, and faulty stormwater infrastructure. Through a community–university partnership and using Geographic Information Systems and digital mapping tools, watershed researchers and university students designed a mobile application (app) that enabled them to collect data associated with these stressors to create a spatial narrative, informed by local community knowledge, that offers visual documentation and representation of community conditions that negatively influence the environment, health, and quality of life in urban areas. By elevating the local knowledge and lived experience of community residents and codeveloping a relevant data collection tool, community residents generated fine-grained, street-level, actionable data. This process helped to fill gaps in publicly available datasets about environmental hazards in their watershed and helped residents initiate solution-oriented dialogue with government officials to address problem areas. We demonstrate that community-based knowledge can contribute to and extend scientific inquiry, as well as help communities to advance environmental justice and leverage opportunities for remediation and policy change.
Environmental health issues are becoming more challenging, and addressing them requires new approaches to research design and decision-making processes. Participatory research approaches, in which researchers and communities are involved in all aspects of a research study, can improve study outcomes and foster greater data accessibility and utility as well as increase public transparency. Here we review varied concepts of participatory research, describe how it complements and overlaps with community engagement and environmental justice, examine its intersection with emerging environmental sensor technologies, and discuss the strengths and limitations of participatory research. Although participatory research includes methodological challenges, such as biases in data collection and data quality, it has been found to increase the relevance of research questions, result in better knowledge production, and impact health policies. Improved research partnerships among government agencies, academia, and communities can increase scientific rigor, build community capacity, and produce sustainable outcomes.
What might it take for politically marginalized residents to challenge cuts in public spending that threaten to harm their health and wellbeing? Specifically, how did residents of Flint, Michigan contribute to the decision of an austerity regime, which was not accountable to them, to spend millions to switch to a safe water source? Relying on evidence from key interviews and newspaper accounts, we examine the influence and limitations of residents and grassroots groups during the 18-month period between April 2014 and October 2015 when the city drew its water from the Flint River. We find that citizen complaints alone were not sufficiently able to convince city officials or national media of widespread illness caused by the water. However, their efforts resulted in partnerships with researchers whose evidence bolstered their claims, thus inspiring a large contribution from a local foundation to support the switch to a clean water source. Thus, before the crisis gained national media attention, and despite significant constraints, residents’ sustained organization—coupled with scientific evidence that credentialed local claims—motivated the return to the Detroit water system. The Flint case suggests that residents seeking redress under severe austerity conditions may require partnerships with external scientific elites.
This article draws insights from a case study examining unanswered health questions of residents in two polluted towns in an industrial region in southern France. A participatory health study, as conducted by the author, is presented as a way to address undone science by providing the residents with relevant data supporting their illness claims. Local residents were included in the health survey process, from the formulation of the questions to the final data analysis. Through this strongly participatory science (SPS) process, the townspeople offered many creative ideas in the final report for how the data could be used to assist in improving their health and environment and policy work is already in evidence, resulting from the study. Drawing from the literature on participatory science and expertise as well as from the initial outcomes of the local health study, I propose that SPS produces a form of knowledge justice. Understanding knowledge and its making as part of a social justice agenda aligns well with environmental justice frames. Through SPS, local residents have a hermeneutical resource to make sense of their embodied lives and augment their claims with strong data supporting actions for improving their health and environment.
New analyses are revealing the scale of pollution on global health, with a disproportionate share of the impact borne by lower income nations, minority and marginalized individuals. Common themes emerge on the drivers of this pollution impact, including lack of regulation and its enforcement, research and expertise development, and innovative funding mechanisms for mitigation. Creative approaches need to be developed and applied to address and overcome these obstacles, as “business as usual” continues to externalize the human health costs related to pollution exerting its negative influence on global environmental health.
This critically intersubjectively engaged ethnography focuses on incipient Latinx lead crisis rehabilitation efforts in Flint, MI and the role of education in the context of multicultural struggles for validation. We employ the paradigms of cultural humility, transformative complicity, and empowerment with a focus on organizing strategies that honor faith-based, union, and urban gardening histories. New Orleans and El Caño Martín Peña environmental crisis research inform our comparative analysis. Our popular pedagogical methods promote agency with detained youths from Kalamazoo who join Flint coauthors through protest music, testimonies, and commentaries to interweave, support, and disrupt authorial and community leader privilege.
Researchers of the Northeast Ethics Education Partnership (NEEP) at Brown University sought to improve an understanding of the ethical challenges of field researchers with place-based communities in environmental studies/sciences and environmental health by disseminating a questionnaire which requested information about their ethical approaches to these researched communities. NEEP faculty sought to gain actual field guidance to improve research ethics and cultural competence training for graduate students and faculty in environmental sciences/studies. Some aspects of the ethical challenges in field studies are not well-covered in the literature. More training and information resources are needed on the bioethical challenges in environmental field research relating to maximizing benefits/reducing risks to local inhabitants and ecosystems from research; appropriate and effective group consent and individual consent processes for many diverse communities in the United States and abroad; and justice considerations of ensuring fair benefits and protections against exploitation through community-based approaches, and cultural appropriateness and competence in researcher relationships.
A community-based participatory research process was used to develop an environmental initiative in Wichita, Kansas, called the Wichita Initiative to Renew the Environment (WIRE). The two-year project, led by University of Kansas School of Medicine–Wichita faculty and a community-based organization, was funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The project aimed to identify, prioritize, and address Wichitans’ environmental concerns by engaging the community to assist in developing the project design, establish a community-based environmental leadership council to guide the project, and identify and prioritize the community’s environmental concerns based on impact and perceived urgency for action. The collaboration identified community priorities as: trash disposal, pollution in the Arkansas River and groundwater, and mobile source air pollution. Through WIRE, community members actively engaged and participated in identifying and prioritizing 19 environmental concerns most pertinent to the community, establishing an organization of 25 community members, and setting the stage for future projects to address those problems.
Participatory GIS (PGIS) emerged from the contentious GIS debates of the 1990s as a means of political intervention in issues of social and environmental justice. PGIS has since matured into a distinct subfield in which GIS is used to enhance the political engagement of historically marginalized people and to shape political outcomes through mapping. However, this has proven to be difficult work. We suggest that this is because PGIS, particularly in its community development incarnations, though well-intentioned in endeavoring to enhance the voices of the excluded, is inherently limited because it primarily aims to enhance the inclusion and participation of the historically marginalized by working within established frameworks of institutionalized governance in particular places. This, we suggest, has left this mode of PGIS ill-equipped to truly challenge the political-economic structures responsible for (re)producing the very conditions of socioeconomic inequality it strives to ameliorate. As a result, we argue that PGIS has become de-politicized, operating within, rather than disrupting, existing spheres of political-economic power. Moving forward, we suggest that PGIS is in need of being retheorized by engaging with the emergent post-politics literature and related areas of critical social and political theory. We argue that by adopting a more radical conception of democracy, justice, and "the political," PGIS praxis can be recentered around disruption rather than participation and, ultimately, brought closer to its self-proclaimed goal of supporting progressive change for the historically marginalized.
AimCommunity-based participatory research (CBPR) is an increasingly common approach in the USA, but still relatively rare in Europe. In the industrial zone of Marseille, there is a long history of pollution, but little is known about the health implications. This study documented the prevalence of different health issues in two heavily polluted towns in the industrial zone using a CBPR approach. Subject and methodsThis study used a CBPR approach and epidemiologic methods to answer community members’ questions about the health of residents in Marseille’s industrial zone by randomly sampling a cross-section of residents to systematically document health issues in Fos-sur-Mer and Port-Saint-Louis-du-Rhône, two towns in the industrial port area of Marseille, France. ResultsMany chronic illnesses were elevated in these communities, as compared to regional and national prevalences, including chronic skin problems, asthma, cancer, and diabetes. Chronic skin problems and asthma were among the most common chronic illnesses reported. A majority of respondents also reported acute symptoms that affected daily life, including eye irritation or nose and throat problems. Conclusion
There is likely an environmental explanation for why, even after direct standardization, the prevalences of many diseases were higher in these communities than elsewhere. The combination of CBPR and rigorous epidemiologic methods helps make our findings relevant to both community members and researchers.
Saturation has attained widespread acceptance as a methodological principle in qualitative research. It is commonly taken to indicate that, on the basis of the data that have been collected or analysed hitherto, further data collection and/or analysis are unnecessary. However, there appears to be uncertainty as to how saturation should be conceptualized, and inconsistencies in its use. In this paper, we look to clarify the nature, purposes and uses of saturation, and in doing so add to theoretical debate on the role of saturation across different methodologies. We identify four distinct approaches to saturation, which differ in terms of the extent to which an inductive or a deductive logic is adopted, and the relative emphasis on data collection, data analysis, and theorizing. We explore the purposes saturation might serve in relation to these different approaches, and the implications for how and when saturation will be sought. In examining these issues, we highlight the uncertain logic underlying saturation—as essentially a predictive statement about the unobserved based on the observed, a judgement that, we argue, results in equivocation, and may in part explain the confusion surrounding its use. We conclude that saturation should be operationalized in a way that is consistent with the research question(s), and the theoretical position and analytic framework adopted, but also that there should be some limit to its scope, so as not to risk saturation losing its coherence and potency if its conceptualization and uses are stretched too widely.
Background:
Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) is a term, relatively new to Western science, that encompasses a subset of traditional knowledge maintained by Indigenous nations about the relationships between people and the natural environment. The term was first shared by tribal elders in the 1980s to help raise awareness of the importance of TEK. TEK has become a construct that Western scientists have increasingly considered for conducting culturally relevant research with Tribal nations.
Objectives:
The authors aim to position TEK in relation to other emerging schools of thought, that is, concepts such as the exposome, social determinants of health (SDoH), and citizen science, and to explore TEK's relevance to environmental health research. This article provides examples of successful application of TEK principles in federally funded research when implemented with respect for the underlying cultural context and in partnership with Indigenous communities.
Discussion:
Rather than treating TEK as an adjunct or element to be quantified or incorporated into Western scientific studies, TEK can instead ground our understanding of the environmental, social, and biomedical determinants of health and improve our understanding of health and disease. This article provides historical and recent examples of how TEK has informed Western scientific research.
Conclusions:
This article provides recommendations for researchers and federal funders to ensure respect for the contributions of TEK to research and to ensure equity and self-determination for Tribal nations who participate in research. https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP858.
Structural change approaches—also known as policy and environmental changes—are becoming increasingly common in health promotion, yet our understanding of how to evaluate them is still limited. An exploratory scoping review of the literature was conducted to understand approaches and methods used to evaluate structural change interventions in health promotion and public health literature. Two analysts—along with health sciences librarian consultation—searched PubMed, Web of Science, and EMBASE for peer-reviewed U.S.-based, English language studies published between 2005 and 2016. Data were extracted on the use of evaluation frameworks, study designs, duration of evaluations, measurement levels, and measurement types. Forty-five articles were included for the review. Notably, the majority (73%) of studies did not report application of a specific evaluation framework. Studies used a wide range of designs, including process evaluations, quasi- or nonexperimental designs, and purely descriptive approaches. In addition, 15.6% of studies only measured outcomes at the individual level. Last, 60% of studies combined more than one measurement type (e.g., site observation + focus groups) to evaluate interventions. Future directions for evaluating structural change approaches to health promotion include more widespread use and reporting of evaluation frameworks, developing validated tools that measure structural change, and shifting the focus to health-directed approaches, including an expanded consideration for evaluation designs that address health inequities.
The academy may claim to seek and value diversity in its professoriate, but reports from faculty of color around the country make clear that departments and administrators discriminate in ways that range from unintentional to malignant. Stories abound of scholars--despite impressive records of publication, excellent teaching evaluations, and exemplary service to their universities--struggling on the tenure track. These stories, however, are rarely shared for public consumption. Written/Unwritten reveals that faculty of color often face two sets of rules when applying for reappointment, tenure, and promotion: those made explicit in handbooks and faculty orientations or determined by union contracts and those that operate beneath the surface. It is this second, unwritten set of rules that disproportionally affects faculty who are hired to "diversify" academic departments and then expected to meet ever-shifting requirements set by tenured colleagues and administrators. Patricia A. Matthew and her contributors reveal how these implicit processes undermine the quality of research and teaching in American colleges and universities. They also show what is possible when universities persist in their efforts to create a diverse and more equitable professorate. These narratives hold the academy accountable while providing a pragmatic view about how it might improve itself and how that improvement can extend to academic culture at large.
Background
The limitations of traditional forms of systematic review in making optimal use of all forms of evidence are increasingly evident, especially for policy-makers and practitioners. There is an urgent need for robust ways of incorporating qualitative evidence into systematic reviews.
Objectives
In this paper we provide a brief overview and critique of a selection of strategies for synthesising qualitative and quantitative evidence, ranging from techniques that are largely qualitative and interpretive through to techniques that are largely quantitative and integrative.
Results
A range of methods is available for synthesising diverse forms of evidence. These include narrative summary, thematic analysis, grounded theory, meta-ethnography, meta-study, realist synthesis, Miles and Huberman's data analysis techniques, content analysis, case survey, qualitative comparative analysis and Bayesian meta-analysis. Methods vary in their strengths and weaknesses, ability to deal with qualitative and quantitative forms of evidence, and type of question for which they are most suitable.
Conclusions
We identify a number of procedural, conceptual and theoretical issues that need to be addressed in moving forward with this area, and emphasise the need for existing techniques to be evaluated and modified, rather than inventing new approaches.
Background:
Community advisory boards (CABs) are a common community engagement strategy. Tools for developing CABs that are accessible to academic-community partnerships are limited. This article describes the process and partnership with the Hopi Tribe to develop CAB guidelines as a tool for research funded by the Center for Indigenous Environmental Health Research (CIEHR) and nonaffiliated projects.
Methods:
The CAB guidelines consist of three sections: formation, operation, and sustainability and evaluation. Each section includes best practices and interactive worksheets. The CAB guidelines were piloted with the Hopi Tribe to determine feasibility and relevance.
Results:
The CAB guidelines were well-received by the tribal CAB. Some of the worksheets were difficult to complete because they did not represent their perspectives or introduced potential tension in CAB interactions. Revisions were made accordingly.
Conclusions:
Future evaluation and broad dissemination of the CAB guidelines will promote the use and effectiveness of CABs in health research.