Community Engagement

Since 1996, the Community Engagement Core (CEC) has engaged community partners in a collaborative multidirectional process to identify and address the effects of the environment on human health in Southern California. Specifically, the CEC has developed a model to engage Latinx, Asian/Pacific Islander and African-Americans in Southern California living under economic hardship and facing disproportionate adverse health outcomes from social and environmental disparities.

The CEC facilitates multidirectional interactions among our SCEHSC investigators and community partners under the following goals:

Ensure that community concerns inform SCEHSC science

Increase environmental health literacy among the public, policy-makers and health professionals to inform action to protect environmental public health

Collaboratively develop and disseminate SCEHSC research findings to local and national audiences

Provide tools and strategies to eliminate, reduce or mitigate adverse environmental exposures

Community Partners

Publications

Resources

CEC Leadership

Jill Johnston, Ph.D.

CEC Director

jillj@usc.edu

Wendy Gutschow, MSW

CEC Coordinator

wgutscho@usc.edu

Amanda Jimenez, M.S., M.Sc.

CEC Coordinator

amandaji@usc.edu

Additionally, the CEC benefits from many advisors, including a Community Advisory Board with representatives from community-based, academic, public health, legal, children’s health, urban planning and communications backgrounds.

Main CEC target audiences include communities, primarily reached through community-based organizations, together with policymakers and health professionals to address:

• Transportation-related air pollution and impacts on health, which has evolved directly from key SCEHSC research findings showing air pollution to be one of Southern California’s leading environmental health issues

• Concerns about health impacts from goods movement facilities, including marine ports, railyards and inland warehouses

• Broader health and emerging air quality concerns arising from land-use decisions such as locating industries adjacent to homes and schools across the multiethnic landscape