Community Engagement Core

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Project Summary of the Community Engagement Core (CEC) The Community Engagement Core (CEC) of the Center for Environmental Health in Northern Manhattan (CEHNM) conducts and actively disseminates our Center’s cutting-edge, community-engaged environmental health research, making it accessible to community members, policy-makers, researchers and educators, public health practitioners, and healthcare providers through relationship-building and innovative dissemination of scientific findings via in-person and technology-based communication methods. Locally, CEHNM has joined forces with community partners, including WE ACT for Environmental Justice, Inc. (WE ACT), South Bronx Unite, and Little Sisters of the Assumption, all of which are well rooted within the markedly disadvantaged, medically underserved, environmentally burdened Northern Manhattan and South Bronx communities. The CEC has ongoing, successful partnerships by which we identify these communities’ concerns, provide information about CEHNM findings that can be used to address them, and engage community and other stakeholders in dialogues to promote sound personal and policy decisions about environmental health. We propose to realize broader national and international outreach through widespread communications via media and digital platforms. The CEC’s ongoing efforts to promote healthy and resilient homes and communities meaningfully address a wide array of environmental health issues, including facilitating conversion to clean heating, reducing local vehicular emissions, climate resilience, and emergency preparedness among vulnerable groups. This focus fully leverages the strengths and expertise of our new CEC director, Dr. Diana Hernández, and is the ideal outgrowth for CEHNM’s overall strategic vision and organizational structure, which emphasizes the translation of scientific evidence into prevention. With new leadership and additional community partners, we have substantial momentum to support existing projects and begin new initiatives. Moving forward, the CEC will collaborate with numerous stakeholders, including those who serve on our stakeholder advisory board (SAB)— which features distinguished multi-sectoral advisors involved in education, the news media and communication, and local and regional government agencies—to provide community-engaged initiatives. Our specific aims are to: 1) foster effective collaboration between community members and Center investigators; 2) broaden partnerships to support environmental health policy and advocacy; 3) implement an active communications strategy; 4) engage in multi-level training and outreach and engagement activities; and 5) evaluate the impact of our work.