Background: Public Health Nursing practice for Planetary Health involves interconnection with Nature and movement building for system change. Little nursing knowledge exists for sustaining social movements for environment and justice. The purpose of this project was to describe the power-relations involved in leading and following in a small-and-sustaining community based organization (CBO) in Northwest Washington that addresses hyper-local pollution threats to Planetary Health.

Methods: In our critical participatory action research study we applied a human-rights framework with collaborative negotiation theory to analyze objectives, positions, and interests on leading and following from interviews with key stakeholders from the CBO, and ontopoetic interview techniques with the local stream at the center of the CBO’s relational network. We employed participatory and iterative analysis to derive (vivo and en-vivo) themes, reflexive journaling to monitor for power, craft, and rigor; and participatory visual analysis to assess for continuities and discontinuities of power-relations within stakeholder objectives, positions, and interests.

Results: We completed ten interviews (4F, 5M, 1 Stream) deriving 33 thematic codes for objectives (n=13), positions (n=14), and interests (n=6). We identified 6 ways power-relations were involved in these interviews: Money Power, Expert Power, Balancing/not balancing power, Roles & Power relations, Organizing power, and Tangled power-relations with other organizations.

Conclusions: Nursing identification of shared interests and recognition of power-relations at work in local CBO’s provides new modalities for deepening engagement for stimulating and sustaining environment and justice stewardship across a wide range of issues.