Community Engagement Core (CEC)
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ULSRC’s Community Engagement Core facilitates dialogue between impacted community members, stakeholders, policymakers and ULSRC's interdisciplinary investigators to foster better knowledge and research targeting volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and their exposure. The CEC continues to augment the ULSRC team's capacity to understand the value of community engagement and engaged research through bi-directional knowledge sharing.
The CEC convenes our Community Advisory Board and Coordinating Committee as a way to maintain and grow our connections in the community. We host and record Community Knowledge Exchange Sessions on relevant topics of community concern, and we respond to requests for assistance from agencies and community members regarding events/conditions of concern. We also document current and historical conditions of Superfund sites in our region and inventory public records for the presence of VOCs at Superfund sites nationwide.
The ULSRC Community Engagement Core has:
- Developed lay summaries of environmental health research by generative artificial intelligence to educate general public about the effect of environmental exposure on health
- Assisted with VOC metabolite surveillance in wastewater
- Participated in Lee’s Lane Superfund site redevelopment process activity
- Released a “playbook” based on the investigation conducted by regional experts to document how to conduct a comprehensive evaluation process for the former Lee’s Lane Landfill in Louisville, Kentucky, that could be adapted for other Superfund sites
- Developed a website for Valley of the Drums Superfund Site
- Partnered with our P30 Center to host the first regional meeting of the Association for the Advancement of Participatory Science (AAPS) which resulted in a citizen-science community fishing day with over 100 volunteers to raise awareness for the health risks of Ohio River fish consumption