International Training in Environmental Health over the Lifespan

项目摘要/摘要

Project Summary / Abstract Inadequate community inclusion in academic research and policy-making perpetuates the disproportionate health impacts of climate change. Academic-community partnerships called "communiversities" are models that have been used effectively to address environmental injustices. The communiversity model aims to improve experts' and leaders' understanding of community-based participatory research (CBPR) to improve public health. This supplement funding application will build on an existing partnership between the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai located in New York and the National University in Costa Rica to support training in CBPR approaches to climate change and health. The proposal focuses on two NIH Climate Change and Health Strategic Framework Pillars: Health Equity, and Training and Capacity Building. This supplement aims to create additional research training possibilities on climate change's effects on human health for community leaders interacting with public university researchers in Costa Rica. We'll do this by sponsoring two initiatives that fit well within the parent grant's aims:1) To add a course on CBPR methods for community leaders and research scientists to the current "Virtual School for Latin American Public Health Professionals". This course will consist of 14 modules based on the Third and Fourth National Climate Assessment's Health Chapters, which organize climate change's health implications. These topics will be complemented with modules on CBPR methods specifically designed for community leaders and academic scientists, respectively. Specific aim 2) To support Mentored Communiversity Projects to Address the Health Effects of Climate Change in Vulnerable Communities. After a call for applications, two projects that include partnerships between community-based organizations and researchers from public universities will be selected for funding and mentorship. We expect that these supplemental activities will result in seven community leaders and seven researchers who will have participated in a course on CBPR and climate change, the development of course materials that can be disseminated, and two communiversity projects that will have been implemented with the potential to further address health effects of climate change in underserved communities in Costa Rica.