Global Center on Climate Change and Water Energy Food Health Systems - Community Engagement Core

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COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT CORE ABSTRACT The Community Engagement Core (CEC) will be a central part of Center activities and will work closely with the Research Project team, and the Administrative and Data Services cores to ensure equitable and ethical involvement of community stakeholders in the implementation of the proposed interventions. The exploratory efforts of the proposed Global Center on Climate Change and Water Energy Food Health Systems (GC3WEFH) will target vulnerable communities (i.e., farming villages and refugee camps) living in the Azraq Basin region of Jordan that are experiencing drastic impacts on their water resources due to the effects of climate change. The rural agricultural communities we target suffer from poverty and are in a similar geopolitical situation as many of the low-to-middle income countries that will be impacted the most by climate change. The goal of the CEC is to not only facilitate access to these communities, but to involve local residents in the development of solutions so that interventions will meet the actual needs of targeted communities and be more likely to succeed in improving health outcomes. Importantly, communities will be partners, rather than just participants, in the proposed research and the evaluation of outcomes. To accomplish this goal and evaluate water and sanitation issues at the Water Energy Food Health (WEFH) nexus, the CEC will work with seven different local Jordanian organizations in multiple stages of engagement, including formation of a stakeholders’ advisory board and use community-based participatory research to pursue the following specific aims: 1) Establish an outreach plan to bring community partners together to work under the umbrella of the Center. 2) Initiate multidirectional engaged communication and education between the communities of farmers, youth, refugees, as well as public officials with Center researchers, focused on the scientific background of climate change and its direct and indirect health impacts. This will advance data literacy in the target communities as they relate to climate change. 3) Translate findings from publicly available data and the Center’s research project component into meaningful applied ideas, interventions, and actions that the community can implement. 4) Implement feasible policies and interventions driven by the scientific findings and initiated by the needs of the community. 5) Evaluate the impacts of these activities and actions in terms of the level of community engagement, feasible actions, and elevated knowledge about the problem and potential solutions. Successful engagement with the community and achievement of these aims will serve to galvanize and empower community stakeholders in using data analysis and mapping tools to help address significant regional environmental challenges, while also creating a network of water advocates who will serve to engage the wider community for future research undertaken by the GC3WEFH.