Abstract
BackgroundThis paper explores strategies to engage community stakeholders in efforts to address the effects of traffic-related air pollution (TRAP). Communities of color and low-income communities are disproportionately impacted by environmental threats including emissions generated by major roadways.MethodsQualitative instrumental case study design was employed to examine how community-level factors in two Massachusetts communities, the City of Somerville and Boston’s Chinatown neighborhood, influence the translation of research into practice to address TRAP exposure. Guided by the Interactive Systems Framework (ISF), we drew on three data sources: key informant interviews, observations and document reviews. Thematic analysis was used.ResultsFindings indicate political history plays a significant role in shaping community action. In Somerville, community organizers worked with city and state officials, and embraced community development strategies to engage residents. In contrast, Chinatown community activists focused on immediate resident concerns including housing and resident displacement resulting in more opposition to local municipal leadership.ConclusionsThe ISF was helpful in informing the team’s thinking related to systems and structures needed to translate research to practice. However, although municipal stakeholders are increasingly sympathetic to and aware of the health impacts of TRAP, there was not a local legislative or regulatory precedent on how to move some of the proposed TRAP-related policies into practice. As such, we found that pairing the ISF with a community organizing framework may serve as a useful approach for examining the dynamic relationship between science, community engagement and environmental research translation. Social workers and public health professionals can advance TRAP exposure mitigation by exploring the political and social context of communities and working to bridge research and community action.
Highlights
This paper explores strategies to engage community stakeholders in efforts to address the effects of traffic-related air pollution (TRAP)
This paper explores the research question: what are the approaches to community engagement employed by organizations in Somerville and Chinatown in efforts to mitigate the effects of TRAP? What emerged was a story about the role of political history in present day efforts related to community engagement in public health promotion and policy advocacy, as well as the importance of leveraging existing advocacy efforts and infrastructure
We provide a brief background on the Community Assessment of Freeway Exposure and Health (CAFEH) partnership, a multiuniversity and multi-community consortium that studies a broad range of TRAP-related issues, and our guiding model, the Interactive Systems Framework (ISF) [20], followed by a detailed description of the research methodology, and a discussion of the study results
Summary
Moving from research to community action necessitates broad community engagement to shift public will This is true in the case of advancing environmental justice, which often involves policy change and modifications to the built environment, as well as shifts in both public and private sector practice. Communities are complex adaptive systems [15], and successful strategies to advance health, such as policy and practices to reduce inequities in pollution exposure, likely vary across and within communities [16]. This variability poses challenges for documenting and replicating best practices [16]
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