Building policy change capacity to advance environmental justice research and advocacy

Introduction: Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) is increasingly focused on policy change. In North Carolina, community and academic partners affiliated with diverse CBPR projects recently came together to participate in a “train-the-trainers” workshop, Communities Working in Partnership (CWP): Building Capacity for Policy Change, conducted by the Detroit Community-Academic Urban Research Center. The training highlighted a locally successful policy/advocacy initiative which is documenting the environmental impacts of a landfill bordering an historic African American community and advocating for its closure.

Methods: We integrated the CWP framework into research capacity-building workshops, sponsored by UNC's Clinical and Translational Science Award Institute. Our team of community-academic partners developed a workshop with examples of how two communities partnered with universities to use research to bring about change in environmental impacts of landfills and industrial hog operations .The CWP components provided tools, such as assignments on prioritizing advocacy strategies, to enhance participants' policy advocacy skills and knowledge.

Results: The “Environmental Justice in Community Health” workshops were delivered in three regions across the state, training a total of 43 participants. Evaluations show strong evidence of the effectiveness of the workshops and participants' increased capacity for policy-advocacy. These workshops served as a springboard in two of the regions for ongoing efforts to bring attention to environmental justice issues and to combine research with policy-advocacy.

Discussion: This presentation highlights the success of merging the CWP Training with the experiences and voice of Community Experts, to enhance community-academic partnerships success in research and advocacy efforts.