Partnerships for Environmental Public Health (PEPH)

Program Description

The PEPH program is an umbrella program that brings together scientists, community members, educators, health care providers, public health officials, and policy makers in the shared goal of advancing the impact of environmental public health research at local, regional, and national levels. For the purposes of this program, Environmental Public Health is defined as the science of conducting and translating research into action to address environmental exposures and health risks of concern to the public. By fostering local, regional, and national partnerships between and among community residents/organizations, researchers, and other stakeholders in the research process, vital information about the linkages between exposures and disease can be discovered and used to promote health and reduce the risk of disease across the populations at highest risk.

The PEPH program strives to:

• Strategically coordinate and integrate the various new and existing initiatives that involve communities and scientists working together on contemporary issues in Environmental Public Health research
• Develop and evaluate strategies to communicate environmental public health messages to a diversity of audiences
• Create and provide materials to increase awareness and literacy about environmental health risks
• Evaluate program contributions to the advancement of environmental public health

A hallmark of this program is that communities are actively engaged in all stages of the research, dissemination, and evaluation. Emphasis is placed on robust research to investigate linkages between exposure and disease, as well as research and evaluation to improve the theories, methods, and implementation strategies for working with communities to address their environmental health concerns. The program emphasizes both scientific advances and development of practical materials for use in communities, with a focus on translating research findings into tools, materials, and resources that can be used by a variety of audiences to prevent, reduce, or eliminate adverse health outcomes caused by environmental exposures.

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