Community Engagement and Dissemination Core

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PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT--CEDC The mission of the Community Engagement and Dissemination Core (CEDC) of the MADRES Environmental Health Disparities Center is to increase public understanding and awareness of the effects of the environment on women’s health, especially during pregnancy and the postpartum period, by engaging Center researchers, scientists and clinicians with residents, communities, health care providers, policymakers and public health officials to create equitable and sustainable partnerships. The CEDC engages with community-based social justice and health care organizations working in health disparity communities, scientists and public officials using a multi-directional and culturally-appropriate and language justice framework to disseminate information, research findings, and policy strategies to understand and reduce maternal environmental health disparities. The CEDC has developed a successful model to engage Latinas together with multi-ethnic health disparity communities in addressing household- and neighborhood- level environmental health concerns in urban Los Angeles, CA. In the current award, we developed novel methods to train mothers, residents and youth in participatory environmental health workshops, conducted community air monitoring, collaborated with multiple stakeholders implementing a novel effort to assess and reduce toxic air emissions at a neighborhood scale, and leveraged traditional and nontraditional communications techniques to disseminate Center science broadly. In the MADRES renewal we will continue to advance environmental health literacy among mothers and leverage new partnership with community health workers. We will disseminate research to local and national audience utilizing innovative communication methods and develop culturally-appropriate tools to share findings and results with MADRES cohort participants. The CEDC will further provide strategies to eliminate, reduce or mitigate adverse environmental health impacts to vulnerable populations and evaluate the success of our CEDC activities.