Environmental Health Assessment by Local Environmental Justice Experts for Evidence-based Decision-making in an Agricultural Community of Northern California

Details

• Alternative Title:
  Community Sci
• Personal Author:
  Aranda, A. A. ; Kelty, J. S. ; Manukian, S. ; Pardo, E. ; Jabbari, K. ; Schmidt, R. J. ; Dabritz, H. A. ; London, J. K. ; Van Winkle, L. S. ; Deeb-Sossa, N.
• Corporate Authors:
  Knights Landing Promotoras
• Description:
  Environmental justice research driven by academics and policymakers often overlooks the valuable insights and leadership of the communities most impacted by environmental hazards. When institution-led research approaches are employed, inadequate community ownership and limited institutional accountability hinder the effectiveness of environmental public health interventions. In contrast, a community-owned and -managed approach to environmental justice research can guide community members in developing evidence-based interventions. This paper outlines a community-led environmental health assessment survey (sample= 100) and resulting community actions over six years (2017 to 2023) in a Northern California farmworker community with a perceived high prevalence of cancer and exposure to environmental hazards in households, neighborhoods, and job sites. Local resident experts in Knights Landing, CA, documented community risk factors and exposures in collaboration with interdisciplinary undergraduate and graduate student-researchers. The survey instrument focused on environmental hazards identified by local resident experts including vehicular and agricultural pollution, occupational pesticide contact, and sun exposure. Survey findings highlighted the need for targeted interventions to reduce environmental health risks, such as academic outreach programs, county investments in public services, and community-led mutual aid initiatives. Despite academic reservations about our non-random sampling method and data collection by local resident experts, our project sparked substantial actions and investments with minimal personnel and financial resources. Local leaders working with student-researchers developed more effective environmental public health interventions through a community-owned and -managed approach that went beyond the efforts of local regulatory and research institutions.
• Keywords:
  Agricultural Carcinogen Community-based Participatory Action Research Community Health Assessment Survey Environmental Justice Rural
• Source:
  Community Sci. 3(3)
• Pubmed ID:
  39494040
• Pubmed Central ID:
  PMC11525921
• Document Type:
  Journal Article
• Funding:
  P30 CA015704/CA/NCI NIH HHSUnited States/ ; P30 ES023513/ES/NIEHS NIH HHSUnited States/ ; T32 HL007013/HL/NHLBI NIH HHSUnited States/ ; U54 OH007550/OH/NIOSH CDC HHSUnited States/
• Volume:
  3
• Issue:
  3
• Collection(s):
  CDC Public Access
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:ebf8291e3085552b591f2dc146f7038ca90942fa98571599f7f19cbe2c0e99f5eaba069fd8c49f04b760b3f809d7476ec94df4bafe96f7c120f32455a0d42840
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/168895/cdc_168895_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 813.26 KB ]