Community Engagement Core

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PROJECT SUMMARY The purpose of the Community Engagement Core (CEC) is to ensure that the research conducted via the Center for Disparities in Exposure and Health Effects of Multiple Environmental Stressors Across the Life Course is informed by, responsive to, and ultimately serves individuals and communities most affected by environmental health disparities. We will do this in partnership with two community organizations serving residents in Chelsea and Boston, Massachusetts. Activities of the CEC will carry out its two overarching goals: (1) Strengthen environmental health literacy by working with Center investigators, community organizations and individual members of our target communities to create a mutual understanding of how scientific research on daily exposure to indoor and outdoor air pollution, combined with non-chemical stressors in the neighborhood environment and within the home, contribute to environmental health disparities, and identify opportunities for intervention and prevention; and (2) Facilitate communication between and among community stakeholders and Center investigators, including for the purpose of training community partners in the design, conduct, interpretation, evaluation and dissemination of research, and the associated products, within and beyond the health-disparate communities most closely affiliated with our Center. Activities of the CEC are focused on accomplishing: Aim 1: Design, implement and evaluate trainings for community residents recruited to participate in Project 2 research by working with Project 2 investigators and CEC partners to develop appropriate and effective recruitment strategies for residents of Chelsea and Dorchester. We will also design and evaluate trainings for community investigators on our research aims, methods and in home-based environmental monitoring which will inform future home-based environmental monitoring studies. Aim 2, evaluate and inform Project 1 and 3 chemical and non-chemical stressor constructs, will be accomplished via formal stakeholder focus groups in Chelsea and Dorchester during which candidate stressor constructs identified by Project 3 investigators will be compared with stressor concerns of community members. We will also organize community sessions to share results of cumulative risk models in Chelsea and Dorchester using innovative and engaging communication methods which will also be evaluated for the risk communication literature. Finally, Aim 3 will focus on the development of culturally appropriate educational materials that translate the aims and findings of Projects 1-3, and Center pilot programs, to improve environmental health literacy while reducing risk in and beyond the populations of Chelsea and Dorchester, Massachusetts. This will involve close collaboration with Center investigators and CEC partners to develop materials that appropriately communicate the aims and findings of Center studies to stakeholders, including partners associated with the four cohort studies being leveraged in Project 1 (the CARDIA study and Children’s Health Watch sites).