Environmental justice mapping tools are an important resource for helping identify communities at risk for environmental injustice and helping to guide decision making for policymakers, researchers, and communities. They typically include indicators related to environmental risks (e.g., air quality), socioeconomic factors (e.g., demographic data), and physical health (e.g., disease morbidity and mortality). Recent reviews have found that only two existing tools incorporate indicators related to infectious disease, despite the intrinsic relationship between environmental conditions and infectious disease transmission. This article provides a comprehensive framework for incorporating infectious disease indicators into environmental justice screening and mapping tools. The framework for indicator selection includes four key dimensions: relevance to environmental justice, data quality and availability, spatial–temporal characteristics, and practical utility for decision making. Indicators can be categorized into three types: direct disease measures (e.g., morbidity and mortality), vulnerability indicators (e.g., vaccination rates), and environmental risk factors (e.g., vector habitats). Some of the challenges to incorporating infectious disease indicators include temporal variability (e.g., seasonality) and the availability of spatially meaningful direct measures that align with other indicators. However, methodological approaches could overcome these challenges—for example, incorporating dynamic disease surveillance data using rolling averages for endemic diseases. Integrating infectious disease indicators into environmental justice mapping tools is a complex challenge but a vital step in advancing environmental health equity.

The environmental quality in Sampson County, North Carolina (NC), is degraded by numerous polluting facilities. These facilities pose a contamination threat to groundwater quality, which poses a public health concern in a county where over half of its residents rely on private wells. This case study describes the work of a community–university partnership to understand private well water quality and water-related inequities across Sampson County. From March 2021 to March 2023, a local environmental advocacy organization, partnered with faculty and students from two public universities in NC, established a water quality testing (WQT) team. The team tested approximately 180 samples for metals, ions, fecal coliform, and/or perfluoroalkyl substance and conducted surveys and semi-structured interviews with residents to learn more about their sensory experience of their water. The team’s applied research presented unique opportunities for residents to actively learn about their water quality and factors that may impact it. This work also encouraged community mobilizing, organizing, and advocacy to local and state officials for infrastructure investments and more well testing in the county. These opportunities were due, in large part, to the strong local leaders within the WQT team, the team’s ongoing efforts to establish a strong and equitable partnership, the team’s interdisciplinary approach to the work, and our adaptability to change. Residents, community partners, and university-based researchers were transformed through the research process, underscoring potential for community-driven research to serve as an important action in and of itself.

The development, implementation, and enforcement of regulations to address environmental burdens are key to achieving environmental justice (EJ). The participation of all people, particularly those experiencing environmental harms, in cocreating environmental regulations is termed procedural EJ. To date, scant attention has been paid to the involvement of laypeople in environmental enforcement, thereby potentially impeding realization of procedural EJ. I turn to New York City (NYC) to examine how laypeople are included in air pollution enforcement. In NYC, as elsewhere, air pollution is a major public health and EJ issue. To enforce the city’s Air Code, the Citizens Air Complaint Program (CACP) permits laypeople to report commercial vehicles for idling in excess of the legal limit. Lay complainants receive one-quarter of each paid fine. The number of idling summonses initiated by laypeople increased from 9,070 reports in 2019 to 124,330 in 2024. The CACP’s involvement of laypeople in environmental enforcement of air pollution is laudable and should be replicated. However, several important barriers exist that prevent broader participation in the program, thereby directly inhibiting the realization of procedural EJ. I highlight four dimensions of the CACP—bureaucracy and transparency, technical, digital literacy, and temporal—that limit its ability to realize air pollution producer accountability.

Recognizing that there is power in visibility, the Agents of Change Fellowship was launched in 2019 to amplify the voices of early-career researchers whose work-centered environmental justice. To date we have trained 57 fellows from 38 different U.S. based institutions. The goal of the fellowship was to increase diversity of thought and help shape the public dialogue on environmental health sciences, policy, and justice. The 65 essays and 108 podcast episodes produced have reached nearly 2 million people. In addition to increasing visibility, the fellowship program aims to deepen fellows’ familiarity with the movement-building praxis. In this case study we present how this innovative academic-media organization partnership is an important initiative for uplifting the voices and stories of emerging environmental justice leaders. We share the history of the partnership, the design of the curriculum, the program profile, and the barriers to sustaining the program. Overall, we conclude with recommendations for sustaining initiatives and share our vision for future training programs.

Recurring climatic and non-climatic hazards, combined with state negligence, challenge resource security for communities already burdened by environmental injustices. Grounded in community-based participatory research (CBPR) and action research (AR) traditions, this article reports results from a 3-year partnership with local leaders in Corcovada, Puerto Rico, to understand the relationships between food, energy, and water (FEW) security and community health in the wake of compounding hazards and disasters. Here, and elsewhere in Puerto Rico, environmental deregulation and state abandonment forces local leaders and community-based organizations into becoming the first responders for community-scale FEW insecurities. We conducted a participatory mapping exercise with 16 community leaders to co-learn about local experiences and response efforts after recurring hazards and disasters between 2011 and 2021. Participatory mapping facilitated a horizontal learning process to understand and communicate the interconnections between FEW insecurities and physical and social infrastructures, developing opportunities for knowledge co-production, capacity-building, and education at these intersections. Our partnership continues to strengthen community leadership in local decision-making, disaster mitigation, and resource management and allocation—and contributes a problem-oriented AR case for supporting frontline communities.

This study examines spatial inequities in the siting of utility-scale solar facilities in North Carolina from 2012 to 2023. Median housing value, distances to transmission lines, distance to roads, and solar irradiance are incorporated to generate scores and conduct matching for controlling siting suitability considerations. Logistic regression analyses indicate that the facilities are more likely to be located in Census Tracts with lower educational attainment and higher disability rates. This result may imply that the associations between socio-economic factors and utility-scale solar facilities siting remain statistically significant even after accounting for siting suitability considerations. This study offers an evidence-based planning perspective to improve solar energy deployment planning and evaluation.

Environmental justice is closely related to corrective justice, procedural justice, and meaningful public participation. Effective communication of research-based evidence is critical but often overlooked in environmental decision-making processes. This article examines how scientific research findings frequently fail to influence policy decisions due to communication barriers between researchers, communities, and decision-makers. We propose that effective science communication strategies, including the accessible translation of complex findings into formats understandable to diverse stakeholders, can bridge this gap. This article advocates for adopting journalistic communication styles, strengthening evidence-based arguments, and strategically using mass media channels as specific approaches to simultaneously motivate greater public participation in decision-making processes although making scientific evidence more accessible and compelling for policymakers.

Introduction: Environmental justice mapping tools have been developed by governmental agencies to provide clear information on the spatial distribution of socio-environmental exposures and the distribution of risk. EJScreen, the nationwide tool created by the Environmental Protection Agency to make such data available, was taken offline by the current administration in February 2025. We explored whether remaining geographic risk tools may be effective in evaluating associations with respiratory disease and compared them with one another. Methods: County-level respiratory disease measures selected for this study include prepandemic asthma, influenza, and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) hospitalization rates, as well as 2021 COVID-19 mortality rates. Data were regressed using a binary indicator of whether the county meets the definition of a disproportionately impacted community used by Colorado EnviroScreen. Rate ratios and 95% confidence intervals were estimated. Comparability with EnviroScreen was explored for the Social Vulnerability Index (SVI) and the Climate Vulnerability Index (CVI). Results: Higher hospitalization rates for asthma and influenza were identified in counties meeting the criteria for disproportionately impacted communities. Point estimates for RSV hospitalization and COVID-19 mortality were also higher, though not statistically significant. The SVI was found slightly more collinear with EnviroScreen than the CVI with EnviroScreen, although both were highly correlated. Conclusion: Remaining geographic risk tools may aid policymakers and public health agencies in decision-making and resource allocation for respiratory disease, guiding targeted public health campaigns such as mobile vaccination clinics, messaging campaigns, and available testing for infectious respiratory disease in burdened regions.

Heat waves are increasing in frequency, intensity, magnitude, and duration, causing a disproportionate impact on marginalized communities exposed to urban heat islands. Newly emerging spaceborne thermal sensing instruments, such as ECOSTRESS and Hydrosat, now have the capabilities to measure urban surface temperatures accurately at the block level (<100 m) and with enough frequency to capture transient heat waves (daily to subweekly). Such data are critical for monitoring and informing policy and mitigation efforts, such as resurfacing, green space, cooling stations, and medical mobilization. These serve to advance environmental justice and reduce health risks—and deaths—among the most vulnerable: minority, low-income, elderly, those with physical- and mental-health preconditions, unhoused, children, and outdoor workers. While scientists have increasingly used satellite data to quantify urban heat islands and risks to communities, there remains a significant gap in action resulting from such analyses—a figurative and literal “valley of death.” Reviewing over 500 scientific publications, we identify a critical lack of engagement with the communities being analyzed (10.9%; n = 58); yet, community engagement is key to bridging such analysis with subsequent action. Here, we demonstrate how participatory community engagement directly with data and analysis leads to increased policy changes and mitigation efforts. Our framework has immediate implications for how scientists may augment their work and thought processes to achieve objectives and impact from urban heat research, needed now in the face of accelerating climate change.

Building an archive and oral history project for the North Carolina Environmental Justice Network (NCEJN) illuminated some of the challenges and possibilities of creating systems of institutional memory for grassroots movements. Traditional archival practices had to be adapted to cater to the specific needs of this user community, who use the historical information for ongoing advocacy and activism efforts. For several decades, community-based archives have documented the histories of social movements and provided vital resources to grassroots activists. This article adds to the existing literature by offering a case study on the construction of a community archive and oral history project that centers environmental justice activists as archival users. Rejecting neutrality was key in the construction of this activist archive, which modified traditional archival techniques to improve activists’ access to information needed for their current struggles for environmental justice. NCEJN and its community partners expressed excitement about the resources provided by the archive, as well as the opportunity to expand their historical documentation efforts in the future.