Community Outreach and Engagement Core

PROJECT SUMMARY COMMUNITY OUTREACH AND ENGAGEMENT CORE There is an urgent need for community-driven, environmental justice (EJ) research with authentic community engagement to drive innovative climate health equity research and to develop effective strategies to protect urban populations in Chicago and beyond. The community outreach and engagement core (COEC) within the UIC Center for

Climate Health Equity will facilitate multi-directional communication between EJ communities, health care, policy makers and researchers, and will build capacity for long-term and sustainable community driven climate health solutions (Aim 1). This will be accomplished by establishing a community advisory group, embedding

community leadership across CECHE, and hosting regional summits so that target audience perspectives are integrated and drive priority research and other dissemination activities across the entire center. This work will also support opportunities to translate and disseminate research results into meaningful climate change and

health knowledge and solutions. We will establish a Climate Health Institute using a train-the-trainer mode (Aim 2) to expand knowledge and understanding regarding climate and health impacts among community stakeholders and advance citizen scientists in climate research; and build capacity for community

organizations to advance climate and health solutions at the neighborhood level. We will also support solutions-driven green infrastructure and advance stakeholder-driven comprehensive urban planning and policy solutions for advancing climate health equity (Aim 3). This will be accomplished by conducting formative

qualitative research to understand community voices and concerns regarding the impact and value of nature- based resiliency solutions and concerns regarding zoning and regional planning. Beyond this micro-scale neighborhood-level work, we will create an inventory of current zoning and planning efforts in Chicago and the

300 largest U.S. municipalities to identify possible nature-based policy solutions for climate and health, examining how policy approaches vary by community characteristics, and assessing the relationship between the policies and selected health outcomes in the 300 municipalities. The result of this work will allow the COEC

to work with the Geospatial and Data Analysis Core and use research project results to introduce new tools to transform current policies into more effective climate solutions; and use vulnerability indices and nature-based explore tools to create alternative indicators of climate vulnerability in Chicago. This innovative work will ensure

all center activities and research are guided by community and stakeholder priorities. These novel approaches will also serve as a model for community-engaged urban climate change research across the United States and globally. Finally, the COEC will fill a critical chasm between climate, health sciences, and urban planning

research and bring diverse perspectives together to ensure that future research and strategies are grounded in real-world experiences of vulnerable urban communities throughout Chicago and beyond.