Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #99878

Gina Margillo, MA, Impact Assessment, 320 West 4th Street, Suite 200, Los Angeles, CA, CA 90013, 213-620-2586, GMargill@dhs.ca.gov and Lola Santos, Guam Communications Network, 4201 Long Beach Blvd., # 218, Long Beach, CA 90807.

Supporting Community-Based Efforts in Preventing Chemical Exposures

Everyday, Southern California's ethnically diverse subsistence and recreational fishers catch and eat fish from the Palos Verdes Shelf, one of the largest contaminated sediment sites in the US. The Fish Contamination Education Collaborative (FCEC) is a multidisciplinary partnership that aims to reduce exposures by building the capacity of local community leaders and government agencies to conduct outreach and education pertaining to fish contamination. Through a grants program, community-based organizations receive training and funding to create and implement culture-specific programs that disseminate environment health messages and change fish consumption behaviors within communities. Eight organizations representing the Cambodian, Latino, Philipino, Pacific Islander, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Korean communities have developed innovative outreach techniques that include everything from classroom to multi-media methods. In this presentation, the participatory program philosophy and design will be described and various culturally appropriate outreach and educational methods will be presented.

Participants will identify the funding and training needs of community-based organizations for their participation in this environmental health partnership, describe effective culture-specific outreach methods within immigrant and refugee communities; list three facots for creating successful community and government collaborations.

Learning Objectives: