CURES COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT CORE ABSTRACT The Center for Urban Responses to Environmental Stressors (CURES) aims to improve the lives of citizens of Detroit through community-responsive research that deflects the adverse health effects of combined exposures to chemical and non-chemical stressors in a complex urban environment. To address the mission and objectives of CURES, the Community Engagement Core (CEC) has established several innovative and community responsive practices. The CEC team is a diverse group and includes two leaders of the CURES Community Advisory Board (CAB) who are integrated into all CEC activities and meetings and more broadly across CURES as well. The CEC will convene a large, 23 member, highly engaged CAB at meetings three times per year that will be co-facilitated with the CAB Co-Chairs. The CEC and CAB will co-develop events that will allow us to directly reach hundreds of Detroit residents each year through a grassroots outreach strategy that provides information and resources on timely and locally relevant environmental health topics. The CEC will also develop innovative training programs, including tailored skill building to enhance science communication skills with public audiences and advocacy training sessions to provide community stakeholders with knowledge on how to connect with key decision makers. During the next four years, the interface between racial justice and environmental justice will be the overarching aim and foundation of the CURES CEC’s activities, and the CEC’s core objective will be to foster community resilience through the integration of community members and their needs with CURES priorities and activities. To address the CURES CEC’s overarching aim and core objective, the CEC will pursue four Specific Aims: (1) The CEC, through shared leadership with CAB Co-Chairs, will focus on amplifying and integrating CAB and community stakeholders’ environmental health and anti-racism priorities across the CURES Cores and activities. (2) The CEC will increase community stakeholders’ and researchers’ capacity for multi-directional engagement about environmental health science by co-developing and implementing a tailored skills training curriculum for community stakeholders and researchers to provide best practices for collaboration, communication, and engagement with diverse populations. (3) The CEC will deliver educational forums (“Environmental Health Chats”) and spin-off sessions, that will focus on the main research themes of CURES investigators and current community priorities, using strategies that take into account the social determinants of health that impede Detroit residents’ access to health bolstering information, e.g., digital exclusion, limited transportation, etc. (4) Finally, the CEC will deliver innovative advocacy training that melds hazardous site tours with hands-on advocacy education that will embolden community stakeholders to become effective advocates in the policy influencing process.
