Community Engagement Core
Core director: Joan Flocks, MA, JD
Co-investigator: Brian Mayer, PhD
The long term objective of the Community Engagement Core: Facilitating Community-Based Environmental Action (FACE) is to work with community members and their advocates to address health concerns associated with environmental contamination and to acquire means to evaluate and communicate clearly about their environmental health concerns. For those community groups that express interest, education and training on environmental measurement and hazard assessment will be available through SRP researchers and facilities. Direction from community-based organizations and individuals will be pursued at all stages in the evolution of FACE. Personnel have worked with individual community members and groups in the Lake Apopka and Escambia County areas and have chosen these as communities of focus.
The specific aims presented below summarize three different roles for FACE:
Resource Center:
- Maintain an accessible, regularly updated website with resources for and about community groups with which the SRP works.
- Act as a clearinghouse for community-oriented materials and information developed by groups nationwide on environmental health issues.
- Collect oral histories and other qualitative or ethnographic data from community members as requested and prepare such data for use in presentation to outside parties.
Liaison:
- Link community members with SRP and other UF researchers on environmental health issues the community identifies as being of concern.
- Link community groups with which the SRP works to other regional community groups concerned with environmental health in order to eventually form a network.
- Develop a process to bring together area health care providers and community members to address local environmental health issues.
Sponsor:
- Develop a mini-grants program through which community groups can conduct projects related to environmental health.
- Facilitate community environmental monitoring among concerned community groups to generate data on local environmental quality.
- Organize SRP presentations at local health related events.
- Invite and sponsor community-oriented speakers on environmental health issues.
- Sponsor a community-oriented conference focusing on environmental health issues affecting the community.
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