The overall goal of the NYU Center Community Outreach and Engagement Core (COEC), which was not supported in the last funding cycle due to budget cuts, is to translate, communicate, and disseminate critical concepts and findings in Environmental Health Science from our Center's scientists'to ensure greater community wisdom and awareness. This COEC has a continuing commitment to foster Environmental Health Science, particularly in translating environmental research to target populations. This COEC will continue to address the public's knowledge gaps about Environmental Health in the form of science advice to communities and policy makers, Web-based and traditional Environmental Health education, and assistance to communities facing environmental adversities. The emphasis of the current COEC proposal is focused in two related areas. Both of these areas translate research information and expertise at the NYUNIEHS Center into actions to improve the health of underserved communities in the NYC area that face environmental issues directly aligned with Center research. One major initiative targets the northern New Jersey minority community of Jersey City (Hudson County, NJ), that is concerned with, and/or exposed to, hexavalent chromium (Cr[6])-contaminated waste sites widely distributed throughout Hudson County, the most urbanized and densely populated county in NJ. Essential for these COEC programs are our Hudson County community-based partners, the """"""""not-for-profit"""""""" Interfaith Community Organization (ICO), which has extensive experience with the Cr-related issues in the region, as well as, the Jersey City Mayor and governing Body, with whom we have also begun to build relationships. In the other major initiative, we are working with the NYU School of Medicine Center for Immigrant Health (CIH;the COEC co-Director is founder and director) and the CIH-founded South Asian Health Initiative (SAHI;a partnership of community members, advocates, and public/medical health practitioners who engage in diverse community based research and education activities) and their already-established community based organization members (CBO). As part of this initiative, the NYU COEC will target underserved South Asian communities in NYC and surrounding Boroughs concerned with arsenic (As) exposure. We will also work with the CIH in its ongoing community outreach initiatives to South Asian taxi drivers to help educate local stakeholders (CBOs), local providers who serve the community, and the at-risk-taxi-driver community in NYC about the health impacts associated with exposure to particulate matter (PM). All activities proposed for the NYU COEC will be achieved through a variety of focused and coordinated events that will be guided by formative research to further identify community needs/concerns. COEC mechanisms for all of the community initiatives will be addressed through town hall meetings, workshops and educational forums, health fairs, and/or provider education developed in partnership with the community. The Center embodies a diverse range of scientific expertise, and is therefore capable of addressing a wide range of community concerns on several scales. In this manner, we utilize our Center resources and expertise to provide unbiased and accurate information about environmental health risks to the public. All outreach initiatives will be guided by the results of COEC focus group meetings, interviews with community leaders, and other stakeholders. Qualitative and quantitative assessment tools will be developed and validated by our Social Scientist and Evaluator, Dr. Solomon, an education evaluation expert with extensive experience in environmental health evaluation.
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