Community Science as a Pathway for Resilience in Response to a Public Health Crisis in Flint, Michigan

Patricia Piechowski,Luther Evans,Karen Calhoun,Dewaun Robinson,Jennifer Carrera,Don Vereen,Arlene Sparks,Sarah Bailey,E Deloney,Athena Mckay,Ismael Byers,E Lewis,Susan Woolford,Courtney Cuthbertson,Joseph Hamm,Kent Key,Kaneesha Wallace,Ella Greene-Moton

doi:10.3390/socsci8030094

Abstract

While the story of the Flint water crisis has frequently been told, even sympathetic analyses have largely worked to make invisible the significant actions of Flint residents to protect and advocate for their community. Leaving the voices of these stakeholders out of narratives about the crisis has served to deepen distrust in the community. Our project responds to these silences through a community-driven research study aimed explicitly at elevating the frame of Flint residents in and around the Flint water crisis. This paper describes the coming together of the research team, the overall project design for each of the three research efforts, and lessons learned. The three sub-projects include: (1) a qualitative analysis of community sentiment provided during 17 recorded legislative, media, and community events, (2) an analysis of trust in the Flint community through nine focus groups across demographic groups (African American, Hispanic, seniors, and youth) of residents in Flint, and (3) an analysis of the role of the faith-based community in response to public health crises through two focus groups with faith based leaders from Flint involved with response efforts to the water crisis. Our study offers insight for understanding trust in crisis, which could be valuable to other communities and researchers seeking to address similar situations. The project offers community science as a model for considering community engagement in research as part of the process of resilience.

Highlights

Since at least January 2016, the Flint water crisis has been a national discussion
Through a community-based participatory research (CBPR) approach to team science, we propose a new definition for team science that incorporates the transdisciplinarity of team science with the formal and informal educational experiences of community members in the bridged concept of “community science.”
Some interventions aimed at supporting resilience in Flint focus on increasing the capacity of individuals to respond to the trauma of the crisis and to use healthy coping strategies when faced with stress and anxiety

Summary

Introduction

Town halls, and televised public forums have occurred, with an effort to gain understanding of the unfolding situation These efforts resulted in multiple narratives about Flint and its residents. Journalists and researchers from around the country and the world conducted interviews and published articles telling the stories of the Flint water crisis, often from the perspective of a small handful of influential individuals. Aspects of those narratives are accurate, they are incomplete and leave out the perspectives, experiences, and actions of Flint community residents (Johnson and Key 2018). Resilience has been applied in a variety of fields to refer to the degree to which a pre-existing system can respond to, and recover from, challenges, either through the mobilization of existing resources or through ability to access and recruit external resources

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