The goal of CRESSH’s Community Engagement Core (CEC) is to ensure that CRESSH’s research is informed by, responsive to, and ultimately serves the individuals and communities most affected by environmental health disparities. To do this, the CEC works in close partnership with two community organizations serving residents in Chelsea and Boston, GreenRoots and Health Resources in Action.

The CEC strengthens environmental health literacy by working with CRESSH investigators, community organizers, and individual members of our partner communities to create a mutual understanding of how scientific research on daily exposure to indoor and outdoor air pollution, combined with non-chemical stressors in the neighborhood environment and within the home, contribute to environmental health disparities. Additionally, the CEC facilitates communication between community stakeholders and CRESSH investigators for the purpose of training community partners in the design, conduct, interpretation, evaluation and dissemination of environmental health disparities research. The goal of the CEC’s partnerships is to identify opportunities for intervention and prevention that can be scaled both within and beyond the health-disparate communities most closely affiliated with CRESSH.

Aims:

1) Design, implement and evaluate training for community residents recruited to participate in research for the CRESSH: HOME study.

2) Evaluate and inform CRESSH: MAP-EHD chemical and non-chemical stressor constructs, exposure stressor models, and microdata simulation constraint variables.

3) Develop culturally appropriate educational materials that translate the aims and findings of CRESSH research to improve environmental health literacy while reducing risk in and beyond the populations of Chelsea and Dorchester.

Contact: Madeleine K. Scammell, CEC Director: mls@bu.edu