VN!N( # ( PRACTICE
#<e: //e>>
BUILDING CAPACITY
A Call for More Participatory Science in Environmental Health Research: Background and Resources to Build Capacity
Sara Duncan, PhD Western Carolina University
recently into various realms including medi- cine and public health (Wiggins & Wilbanks, 2019). Participatory science methods are well suited to environmental health research pur- poses, especially because potential participants are often directly impacted by environmental health problems. In this field, participatory science methods can be used to better assess drinking and groundwater quality, track com- municable diseases, monitor air pollution exposures, and more. Ultimately, research that is conducted with the public might be more likely to lead to comprehensive changes that can address these problems. Further integrating participatory research into the environmental health field has the potential to help meet many goals of the environmental health community. These goals include increasing data collection and availability, capitalizing on local knowl- edge, improving education in environmental health, and increasing the number of indi- viduals coming into the profession (English et al., 2018). Environmental health research- ers and practitioners are often limited by the amount of data they can collect on their own or with laboratory sta. Working with the public as data collectors (and potentially data analyzers and question generators) can provide a more robust set of data that can be represented across a community. In addition, the local community has deep knowledge of environmental problems that are not known to researchers (Fischer, 2000). Local knowledge can be tapped into to bet- ter identify problems that might have come about. Furthermore, the community might be able to generate questions about environ- mental health that they want to be addressed.
Editor’s Note: A need exists within environmental health agencies to increase their capacity to perform in an environment of diminishing resources. With limited resources and increasing demands, we need to seek new approaches to the practice of environmental health. Acutely aware of these challenges, the Journal publishes the Building Capacity column to educate, reinforce, and build on successes within the profession using technology to improve eciency and extend the impact of environmental health agencies. This column is authored by technical advisors of the National Environmental Health Association (NEHA) Data and Technology Section, as well as guest authors. The conclusions of this column are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of NEHA. Dr. Sara Duncan is an assistant professor of environmental health science at Western Carolina University. Dr. Duncan teaches undergraduate courses in air quality, toxicology, and public health, and conducts air pollution exposure research using participatory science and low-cost tools.
E nvironmental health research uses methods developed from many fields such as medicine, epidemiology, biol- ogy, and more. Traditionally this research oc- curs in physical laboratories, computer-based laboratories, and in the field where data are extracted from the environment or people and analyzed post hoc. While these methods have served a crucial role in better understanding the intersection between health and our envi- ronment, this research process often excludes populations that are fundamentally impacted. In the accelerating field of participatory science (historically called citizen science) over the past decade, the public is explic- itly included in the scientific process. While
the application of participatory science to environmental health is still limited in com- parison to other science fields, this column makes the case for increased use of participa- tory science in environmental health research to address various goals of the profession. A non-exhaustive collection of resources to assist in this aim is also provided (Table 1). Participatory science, by definition, in- cludes the public in scientific research. This research can span from data collection by members of the public to community-led proj- ects to address a particular concern or interest (Hecker et al., 2018). Historically, much of this work is conducted in fields such as ecology and biology; however, it has expanded more
34
Volume 87 • Number 1
Powered by FlippingBook