Community Engagement and Urban Agriculture: Addressing Concerns About Toxicants in Soil, Water and Plants

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Core Summary/Abstract The Community Engagement Core (CEC) facilitates bi-directional knowledge exchange between our Superfund Research Center (SRC) and local communities to reduce cumulative impacts, improve nutrition and lower health disparities in disadvantaged neighborhoods of San Diego County, Imperial County and the U.S.-Mexico border region including rural and tribal lands. By empowering youth, conducting workshops, collaborating with communities to develop further research and interventions, developing culturally responsive multimedia science communication tools, and modeling innovative best practices in community engagement, the CEC extends the reach and impact of the science and technological innovations emanating from our SRC. The CEC builds the capacity of vulnerable communities in U.S. EPAs Region 9 and part of Mexico to identify, prioritize and resolve environmental and public health issues related to environmental exposures and Superfund toxicants. The overarching goal is to help prevent toxicant exposure, narrow health disparities, reduce NAFLD and TASH susceptibility, reverse the escalating increase in NAFLD and minimize the risk of TASH, especially in communities that are predominantly Hispanic and Native American. Utilizing an integrative, Sustainability Science, place-based approach with a strong commitment to civic engagement, the CEC will build on our existing community-university partnerships. We will work at sites where, for the past five years, we have been directing best practices in community engagement for exposure prevention and intervention. We are co-designing these interventions through bidirectional interaction with our community partners facilitated through our main community partner the Global Action Research Center in San Diego. The CEC will share SRC science and technology through participatory neighborhood-based educational workshops, trainings, citizen science, youth leadership development, and cumulative impact risk communication. Our approach is rooted in sustainable urban agricultural practices (community gardens and food forests) and the installation of green infrastructure (e.g., ecological landscape and biotic modifications) designed to manage/harvest stormwater and urban runoff in ways that reduce the amount of, and exposure to, urban toxicant contaminants.