Rollins Community Engagement Work Featured in Guidebook
By Sarah Timbie
Earlier this year, members of Emory University’s Health and Exposome Research Center: Understanding Lifetime Exposures (HERCULES) Community Engagement Core (CEC) and Stakeholder Advisory Board co-authored a chapter in the Principles of Community Engagement, third edition, a national practical guide to community engagement, using their Exposome Roadshow and Community Grant Program as an exemplar of community engagement practice.
HERCULES works to research the exposome, the sum of a person's environmental exposures over the course of their lifetime and its impacts on health. The CEC helps HERCULES scientists engage with external partners and communities to learn about local environmental health concerns and partner on research projects.
The CEC engages in a variety of activities to connect communities and researchers. One of these activities is the Clarence “Shaheed” DuBois Exposome Roadshow and Community Grant Program, where Atlanta metro-area communities identify an environmental health priority, plan how to address it, take action to make change, and sustain their efforts with the help of a HERCULES-funded grant.
“The idea for the Exposome Roadshow came from community partner members of the HERCULES Stakeholder Advisory Board,” says Melanie Pearson, PhD, CEC director. “They felt strongly that by sharing the exposome concept with Atlanta-area communities, it would provide a framework for residents to coalesce around in order to take action to address their environmental health concerns.”
The Principles of Community Engagement is a practical guide for researchers, practitioners, and students involved with community engagement written by over 165 renowned practitioners across the country. The CEC’s contribution serves to recognize the center’s work and its contributions to the field of community engagement and environmental health.
The HERCULES Exposome Roadshow and Community Grant program builds community capacity and strives to advance health equity by supporting work to improve environmental health in communities across Atlanta. HERCULES’ work to strengthen capacity in communities not only plays a critical role in reducing environmental health inequities but encourages them to act to address other community concerns as well. Over 15 grants have been awarded to date, and previous grantees have addressed concerns with industrial pollution, brought communities together to involve youth in civic engagement, and decreased neighborhood littering, among other projects.
“We’ve had great success with the program,” says Erin Lebow-Skelley, CEC manager. “In addition to building new research partnerships, we’ve seen communities mobilize and organize around environmental health issues, becoming environmental health leaders in their communities.”
