Community-Academic Partnered Research within a Frontline Environmental Justice Community

Keywords: environmental justice, community empowerment, community engaged research, air monitoring
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

The California Environmental Protection Agency has distinguished the most burdened frontline environmental justice communities as “disadvantaged communities.” Holistic pairing of youth community activists and organizers with academic researchers better informs environmental justice and leverages data analysis in community empowerment fighting pollution disparities. Our community engaged research team consists of a Latinx professor, Latinx doctoral student, a team predominantly composed of BIPOC undergraduate students and a Latinx youth congress from a predominantly Latinx “California disadvantaged” community. Our academic research team conceptualized a community-driven research framework grounded in addressing the environmental injustice facing this nearby over-polluted community. Utilizing this framework, our research team collected preliminary air pollution data, geospatially analyzed the results and presented these maps to the Latinx youth congress during a summer workshop. We utilized interactive participatory workshops, engaging the youth in community asset mapping, air monitoring data collection, data visualization and data communication. This community empowerment model drove the Latinx youth from this community to collect indoor and outdoor air pollution data and utilize geographic mapping tools to visualize and analyze the granularity of the diesel pollution disparity impacting their community. Here we present our community-driven research framework and the community-driven exposure assessment for diesel pollution disparity for this overburdened and predominantly Latinx community. We will underscore the importance of the community’s needs driving the research questions and the methodologies used to answer questions that fit into their overall vision for a more equitable and safe environment where community members live, work, and play.