Engaging Underserved Communities in COVID-19 Health Equity Implementation Research: An Analysis of Community Engagement Resource Needs and Costs.

Background: Meaningful community engagement is instrumental to effective implementation and sustainment of equitable public health interventions. Significant resources are necessary to ensure that community engagement takes place in culturally sensitive, trusted ways that optimize positive public health outcomes. However, the types and costs of resources best suited to enable meaningful community engagement in implementation research are not well-documented.

Co-creating a Theory of Change to advance COVID-19 testing and vaccine uptake in underserved communities.

Objectives: To describe the use of a Theory of Change to meaningfully engage community members from or support underserved communities in two National Institutes of Health-funded implementation science projects aimed at promoting equitable access to COVID-19 testing and vaccination for underserved communities.

Study Setting: Both projects focused on Latino, Black, and immigrant and refugee communities in South/Central San Diego and/or individuals accessing care at a federally qualified health center near the US/Mexico border during December 2020-April 2021.

Study Design: By using a participatory action research design, Community Advisory Boards (CABs) were established for each project with 11 and 22 members.

Monitoring and mitigation of toxic heavy metals and arsenic accumulation in food crops: A case study of an urban community garden.

Urban community gardens have increased in prevalence as a means to generate fresh fruits and vegetables, including in areas lacking access to healthy food options. However, urban soils may have high levels of toxic heavy metals, including lead and cadmium and the metalloid arsenic, which can lead to severe health risks. In this study, fruit and vegetable samples grown at an urban community garden in southeastern San Diego, the Ocean View Growing Grounds, were sampled repeatedly over a four-year time period in order to measure potential contamination of toxic heavy metals and metalloids and to develop solutions for this problem.

Creating healthy and just bioregions.

Dramatic changes taking place locally, regionally, globally, demand that we rethink strategies to improve public health, especially in disadvantaged communities where the cumulative impacts of toxicant exposure and other environmental and social stressors are most damaging. The emergent field of Sustainability Science, including a new bioregionalism for the 21st Century, is giving rise to promising place-based (territorially rooted) approaches. Embedded in this bioregional approach is an integrated planning framework (IPF) that enables people to map and develop plans and strategies that cut across various scales (e.

Differences in health symptoms among residents living near illegal dump sites in Los Laureles Canyon, Tijuana, Mexico: a cross sectional survey.

Living near landfills is a known health hazard prompting recognition of environmental injustice. The study aim was to compare self-reported symptoms of ill health among residents of four neighborhoods, living in haphazardly constructed settlements surrounded by illegal dumpsites in Tijuana, Mexico. One adult from each of 388 households located in Los Laureles Canyon were interviewed about demographics, health status, and symptoms.

One Bioregion/One Health: An Integrative Narrative for Transboundary Planning along the US-Mexico Border.

Global megatrends-including climate change, food and water insecurity, economic crisis, large-scale disasters and widespread increases in preventable diseases-are motivating a bioregionalisation of planning in city-regions around the world. Bioregionalisation is an emergent process. It is visible where societies have begun grappling with complex socio-ecological problems by establishing place-based (territorial) approaches to securing health and well-being.

The NIEHS Environmental Health Sciences Data Resource Portal: placing advanced technologies in service to vulnerable communities.

Background: Two devastating hurricanes ripped across the Gulf Coast of the United States during 2005. The effects of Hurricane Katrina were especially severe: the human and environmental health impacts on New Orleans, Louisiana, and other Gulf Coast communities will be felt for decades to come. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) estimates that Katrina's destruction disrupted the lives of roughly 650,000 Americans.