Grants and Contracts Details
Description
The Community Engagement Cores (CECs) of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS)-funded Centers at the University of Kentucky (UK) (Center for Appalachian Research in Environmental Sciences), University of Cincinnati (UC) (Center for Environmental Genetics, CEG), and the soon to be funded (September 2017) University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) propose to combine their expertise to optimize and evaluate the usability of citizen science tools for environmental health community-engaged research and community outreach. The UC CEG will serve as the lead Center for this administrative supplement.
Currently there are no standard or multi-site tested citizen science protocols for the NIEHS-funded Centers to use. This collaborative, cross-Center project will leverage the academic-community to evaluate the usability and feasibility of citizen science tools for environmental health community-engaged research and community outreach. Our community-academic teams from all three collaborative sites includes community members who will help ensure maximum impact for use of the toolkits for community residents and schools. Specifically, our products will include toolkits for: PM2.5 air sampling; water sampling and analysis for pH and conductivity; and soil sampling for metals analyses. These toolkits will be evaluated and validated across our Centers’ unique rural and urban communities. We will collaboratively develop manuscripts for each of these toolkits and post all materials developed to the PEPH Resource Center Library.
The integration of citizen science within the CECs of UK, UC, and UIC in the multi-site pilot test of citizen science water and air toolkits (UK and UC), the development of a citizen science soil toolkit (UIC), and the online cross-site platform for collective real-time data sharing is an exciting prospect and useful tool not only in community-engaged research, but also for environmental action groups and NIEHS Centers nationwide. In addition, we are innovatively empowering concerned community members to collect environmental (water, air, and soil) data.
Status | Finished |
---|---|
Effective start/end date | 5/1/17 → 3/31/18 |
Funding
- National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences
Fingerprint
Explore the research topics touched on by this project. These labels are generated based on the underlying awards/grants. Together they form a unique fingerprint.