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CBRA Bulletin - February 2008
This new Community-Based Risk Assessment (CBRA) Listserv is sponsored by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and managed through the EPA's National Center of Environmental Research (NCER). Please feel free to forward the listserv messages to interested colleagues or ask them to join!
News and Opportunities | Featured Resource | Featured Science Articles
- CBRA Workshop Proceedings Available
The workshop proceedings from the EPA-sponsored Workshop Research Needs for Community-Based Risk Assessment is now available online. This proceeding is a large document that includes all documents from the entire two-day workshop, including presentations, the final agenda, and the workshop summary. Find the workshop proceedings at http://www.epa.gov/ncer/cbra/presentations/11_18_07/11_18_07_workshop.html. - Community-Engaged Scholarship Faculty Development Charrette (applications due March 17th), May 28-30 in Chapel Hill, NC The Community-Campus Partnerships for Health (CCHP) seek teams from up to twenty diverse colleges and universities across the U.S. to participate in a charrette to facilitate development of innovative campus-wide mechanisms for preparing and supporting community-engaged faculty. This national initiative of CCPH in partnership with the University of Minnesota and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill aims to strengthen community-engaged career paths in the academy by developing innovative competency-based models of faculty development, facilitating peer review and dissemination of products of community-engaged scholarship, and supporting community-engaged faulty through their promotion and tenure process. Find the complete Call for Applications at: http://depts.washington.edu/ccph/faculty-engaged.html.
The Protocol for Assessing Community Excellence in Environmental Health (PACE EH) Guidebook This methodology provides a step-by-step approach and supporting tools to conduct a community-based environmental health assessment (CEHA). The National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) and the National Center for Environmental Health of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (NCEH/CDC) developed PACE EH to enable local health officials to systematically conduct and act on an assessment of environmental health status in their localities. The methodology takes the user through a community-based process for:
- Characterizing and evaluating local environmental health conditions and concerns;
- Identifying populations at risk of exposure to environmental hazards;
- Identifying and collecting meaningful environmental health data;
- and Setting priorities for local action to address environmental health concerns.
NACCHO's CEHA program supports communities using the PACE EH tool. Find an array of PACE EH resources, including Webinars, online modules, and NACCHO's CEHA contacts at: www.naccho.org/topics/environmental/CEHA.cfm.
The Protocol for Assessing Community Excellence in Environmental Health (PACE EH) Toolkit The PACE EH Toolkit is now avialable on NACCHO's website. Inside the PACE EH Toolkit, visitors will find access to a growing array of resources created by NACCHO staff and PACE EH users. To use the Toolkit, you will need to create a user account.
To visit the PACE EH Toolkit, please use the following link:
http://www.naccho.org/toolbox/program.cfm?id=19. NACCHO welcomes tools developed by you and your colleagues. To submit tools or for more information, contact Lisa Jacobs (ljacobs@naccho.org) or (202)783-5550 Ext. 370.
- "Ranking Community Health Status to Stimulate Discussion of Local Public Health Issues: The Wisconsin County Health Rankings" American Journal of Public Health (Vol. 98, No. 2) by Paul E. Peppard, David A. Kindig, Elizabeth Dranger, Amanda Jovaag, Patrick L. Remington
Abstract: United Health Foundation's America's Health Rankings, which ranks the states from "least healthy" to "healthiest," receives wide press coverage and promotes discussion of public health issues. The Unviersity of Wisconsin Population Health Institute used the United Health Foundation's model to develop the Wisconsin County Health Rankings ("Health Rankings") from existing county-level data. The institute first released the rankings in 2004. A survey of the Wisconsin county health officers indicated that they intend to use the rankings for needs assessment, program planning, and discussion with county health boards. The institute implemented many of the health officers' suggestions for improvement of the rankings in subsequent editions. The methods employed to create the rankings should be applicable in other states.
- "Involving Local Health Departments in Community Health Partnerships: Evaluation Results from the Partnership for Public's Health Initiative." Journal of Urban Health (Epublication ahead of print) by Allen Cheadle, Clarissa Hsu, Pamela M. Schwartz, David Pearson, Howard P. Greenwald, William L. Beery, George Flores, and Maria Campbell Casey.
Abstract: Improving community health ?from the ground up? entails a comprehensive ecological approach, deep involvement of community-based entities, and addressing social determinants of population health status. Although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Office of the Surgeon General, and other authorities have called for public health to be an ?inter-sector? enterprise, few models have surfaced that feature local health departments as a key part of the collaborative model for effecting community-level change. This paper presents evaluation findings and lessons learned from the Partnership for the Public?s Health (PPH), a comprehensive community initiative that featured a central role for local health departments with their community partners. Funded by The California Endowment, PPH provided technical and financial resources to 39 community partnerships in 14 local health department jurisdictions in California to promote community and health department capacity building and community-level policy and systems change designed to produce long-term improvements in population health. The evaluation used multiple data sources to create progress ratings for each partnership in five goal areas related to capacity building, community health improvement programs, and policy and systems change. Overall results were generally positive; in particular, of the 37 partnerships funded continuously throughout the 5 years of the initiative, between 25% and 40% were able to make a high level of progress in each of the Initiative?s five goal areas. Factors associated with partnership success were also identified by local evaluators. These results showed that health departments able to work effectively with community groups had strong, committed leaders who used creative financing mechanisms, inclusive planning processes, organizational changes, and open communication to promote collaboration with the communities they served.
- "Lessons from the Navajo: Assistance with Environmental Data Collection Ensures Cultural Humility and Data Relevance" Progress in Community Health Partnerships: Research, Education, and Action (Volume 1, Issue 4, Winter 2007) by Jamie deLemos, Tommy Rock, Doug Brugge, Naomi Slagowski, Thomas Manning, and Johnnye Lewis.
Background: The Navajo Nation suffers from a legacy of environmental pollution from historical uranium mining activities, resulting in adverse public health outcomes and continuous exposure.
Objective: Partner with a Navajo graduate student and community member in a field campaign to characterize the spatial distribution and geochemistry of uranium for a multipathway uranium exposure assessment under development by the Dine Network for Environmental Health (DiNEH) project.
Methods: Attend community meetings, acquire Navajo language skills, and integrate local knowledge into sampling approach of sediment, water, and vegetation.
Results: Navajo participation (1) helped to foster trust in research efforts during community interactions, (2) taught aspects of Navajo culture and language to maintain positive and respectful relations, and (3) conveyed information on Navajo culture that would impact sampling strategies.
Conclusions: Community engagement helps to sustain equitable partnerships and aids in culturally appropriate, relevant data collection.
- "The West End Revitalization Association's Community-Owned and -Managed Research Model: Development, Implementation, and Action" Progress in Community Health Partnerships: Research, Education, and Action (Volume 1, Issue 4, Winter 2007) by Christopher D. Heaney, Sacoby M. Wilson, and Omega R. Wilson.
Background: Principal investigators (PIs) of community-based projects are predominantly university faculty who partner with community-based organizations (CBOs) to find a place to conduct research in communities that will cooperate with their research objectives. University-managed research models (UMRMs) are not always beneficial for CBOs because the university usually manages the study, collects and owns the data, and leverages control at each stage of research, without priority to resolution of problems impacting the quality of life of participating communities.
Objectives: We present the principles of community-owned and -managed research (COMR), as a new community-driven research model developed by the West End Revitalization Association (WERA), a CBO in Mebane, North Carolina.
Methods: We describe WERA's development of COMR, compare the power hierarchies of COMR with traditional UMRMs, distinguish COMR partnerships from UMRM partnerships, discuss disbursement of funds, and control/ownership of data. As the PI of research activities, WERA drafted Memoranda of Agreement (MOAs) for all partners, including academic researchers, implemented quality assurance and control procedures, submitted community research protocols for institutional review, and retained data ownership for action, activism, and problem solving. COMR methods encouraged corrective action of environmental justice (EJ) problems in affected communities, including provision of public, regulated drinking water and sewer services.
Conclusions: COMR promotes CBOs with demonstrated organizational capacity to PI and project manager. The COMR model goes beyond UMRMs and CBPR because it emphasized the credibility and capacity of CBOs to develop, own, manage, foster, and sustain viable research agendas to address ongoing environmental hazards and related threats to health and quality of life.