Building Capacity to Strengthen Partnerships and to Advance Environmental Public Health

The use of community participatory research approaches to address environmental health concerns has been gaining momentum for the past ten years. However, it is recognized that for this approach to be truly effective all partners require the necessary skills to work in a collaborative manner. In this presentation, the speaker will discuss the importance of building capacity of all partners to be effective in addressing environmental public health challenges facing communities. She will highlight myriad approaches to build capacity for community residents and leaders and emphasize the role that researchers and health care professionals can play in these approaches. The presenter will emphasize the need for continued work in this area including health literacy and science literacy for community residents and cultural competencies for researchers. The presenter will provide concrete examples of community resident accomplishments resulting from effective capacity building.