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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Jessica Henry, MS¹, Matt Griffith, MPH², Doug Taylor, PhD², Connie Tucker², and Estelle Archibold². (1) Co-Founder, SCRC, Director of Operations, The CASA Project, 16 View Street #3, Worcester, MA 01610, 617-512-9267, jessica@thecasaproject.org, (2) Southeast Community Research Center, PO Box 5731, Atlanta, GA 31107

The United Nations (UN) Universal Declaration of Human Rights ensures the right to take part in government. The UN Rio Declaration further states that “each individual shall have appropriate access to information concerning the environment.” However, while the United States Government has made available several informational resources regarding community environments, social institutions and financial barriers limit oppressed communities' access to and understanding of these resources, as well as their access to participate in decision-making, thus violating their human rights. The lack of understanding and obstructed access to civic society has produced health disparities and environmental injustices in numerous cases in the US South, with historically oppressed communities experiencing disproportionately high morbidity. It has been recommended in the Public Health literature that Popular Education Pedagogy be used as a tool in a Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) approach to assist oppressed communities in their struggle to gain access to decision-making, and in turn potentially decrease health disparities. This progressive pedagogy is often reduced to an initial dialogue session to identify health issues. The Southeast Community Research Center uses Popular Education in its CBPR approach to investigating environmental health disparities in four African American communities in Georgia and a network of environmentally affected communities in southern Louisiana. This presentation draws from experiences at each site describing successes, challenges, and lessons learned. Presenters will highlight Popular Education methods post-dialogue session, including the partnership building and research stages, and the stage of planning action to reinstate the right to participate in decision-making.

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