Engaging Diverse Partners: Strategies to Address Environmental Public Health: A Joint NIEHS meeting of the Partnerships for Environmental Public Health (PEPH) network and Disaster Research Response (DR2) program

Engaging Diverse Partners: Strategies to Address Environmental Public Health

The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) has promoted and advanced the use of community-engaged research approaches since 1994. Most recently, the institute has emphasized the importance of community engagement by highlighting it as one of the key elements of the 2012-2017 Strategic Plan. Disaster response also requires extensive community engagement to be successful and to ensure protection of all segments of society. In this context, we are coordinating the PEPH meeting with the DR2 workshop to highlight the successful approaches of engaging diverse partners and consider effective partnerships in the aftermath of disasters.

PEPH Goals

The purpose of the PEPH meeting is to focus on successful approaches for engaging with diverse partners. These include: Community-based and Environmental Justice Organizations, Educators, Healthcare Professionals, Tribal Communities, Decision Makers, and Workers. The meeting builds off conversations started during the NIEHS Environmental Health Science FEST on this topic. 

Goals:

1. Promote in-depth conversations on successful approaches
2. Identify similarities and differences across the partners
3. Share educational and outreach resources
4. Outline next steps to use information to inform a series of publications on community-engaged research approaches in the context of environmental public health

DR2 Meeting Description/Objective/Goals

The NIEHS DR2 program facilitates awareness of best practices for conducting research following disasters, and promotes the many successes in disaster research response undertaken by NIEHS grantees. The purpose of this meeting is to facilitate discussions among NIEHS grantees with the goal to create a registry of disaster research expertise that may be leveraged to respond following disasters to inform and improve the health and wellness of those immediately impacted, and those who could be impacted by similar future incidents. This meeting will build on previous hands-on DR2 workshops that connected grantees with disaster response personnel to explore the benefits and challenges associated with conducting research immediately following a disaster, such as, the hypothetical scenarios explored in the Los Angeles, Houston and Boston tabletops. Workshop participants will also learn how to assess their organization's preparedness to respond and conduct research activities following a disaster—culminating in the development of a Disaster Research Response "playbook." Attendees should come prepared to describe their research specialties and resources; to include partnerships from the federal to community level.

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