Community Research in Environmental Health

Studies in Science, Advocacy and Ethics

H. Patricia Hynes, Doug Brugge, Doug Brugge

• Verlag: Routledge
• Jahr: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351950176
• Auflage: 1
• Thema: Social Sciences
• Thema: Urban Sociology

Interest in environmental health research conducted with community participation has increased dramatically in recent years. In this book, Doug Brugge and H. Patricia Hynes relate experience of multiple community collaborations across the United States and highlight the lessons to be learned for those involved in or embarking on community-collaborative research. The volume brings together a variety of cases, examining the nature and form that the collaboration took, the scientific findings from the work and the ethical issues that needed to be addressed. Actual cases covered include lead contaminated soil, asthma and housing conditions, the impact of development on environmental health, the impact of radiation hazards, urban gardening, hog farming and diesel exhaust. The concluding section analyses the experiences of those involved and puts their findings into broader context. Community Research in Environmental Health: Lessons in Science, Advocacy and Ethics provides a valuable guide for all those interested and involved in community research.

SECTION E:
LESSONS AND CONCLUSION

Afterword

H. Patricia Hynes and Doug Brugge

The studies featured in this edited volume were chosen for three primary reasons. All were undertaken in the spirit of collaboration between community and university partners, albeit that some collaborators worked in varying degrees of close and consistent partnership while others worked more like consultants for their community partners. Each case study included here employed sound science methods, tools and designs that were discussed and, in some cases, modified and improved by community input. Finally, the studies’ results were intentionally beneficial to community participants and to the process of community research in one or more ways: through the relevant and actionable knowledge gained in the research process; as an intervention to reduce environmental exposure and risk; as evidence that generated further credibility for and investment in community projects and community-university partnerships; or as a basis of reflection and insight into the challenges of research partnerships which arise across boundaries of privilege and power, from differing ideas of expertise, and often out of opposing historical experiences of research.

Embedded within the criteria that guided our selection of studies are principles of community-collaborative research, principles that we endeavor to employ in our own work and that we also saw at work in varying degrees in the case studies featured in this book. We have adapted these principles from others’ foundational work (see Israel et al., 1998; Minkler and Wallerstein, 2003), and re-formulated them in the light of our own working experience in community-university research partnerships within environmental health. They are meant to be guides t...