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Community Research in Environmental Health: Studies in Science, Advocacy
Doug Brugge and H Patricia Hynes (eds)
ISBN: 0-754641-76-7 2005 278 pages Ashgate
Carolyn Whitzman
Faculty of Architecture, Building & Planning, University of Melbourne, VIC
As an urban planner concerned with healthy communities, it is always a pleasure to read a good book written by public health researchers. Public health has a strong tradition of methodological rigour as well as commitment to positive social outcomes. Increasingly, there is an interest in place-based research, a return to the traditionally strong interaction between urban planning and public health. Community Research in Environmental Health is part of this interaction, gathering together recent health research in housing, open space, urban development and environmental exposure.
In gathering their collection, the editors focused on community research which they define as ‘research conducted at the community level with active participation by members of the community'. The rise of community research is tied to the environmental justice movement which has focused on policy-related research relevant to the poor and visible minority communities. In the United States as elsewhere, socially disadvantaged people have often borne a disproportionate share of environmental hazards, and a coalition of ecological and social equity activists have sought to expose and minimise these injustices. The editors' work on the assumption that a place-based and community-based research focus (not the same thing, since there are communities of interest which are not geographic) can help bring ‘science to the people', and improve social, economic, and political, as well as health, outcomes. They are also strongly supportive of community-campus partnerships for health-related research, a movement which has burgeoned in the United States in recent years.
The chapters cover issues like research ethics, policy outcomes of health research, and methodology, in settings as diverse as inner-city public housing, urban watersheds, and Native American reservations. Several of the chapters are particularly strong on policy implications, such as Doug Brugge and colleagues' research on how traffic injury data was used to influence transportation policy in Boston's Chinatown, and Rachel Morello-Frosch and colleagues' review of recent research in perhaps the most publicised location for the environmental justice movement, Southern California. Other chapters include an evaluation of the social capital impacts of community gardens in the economically depressed community of Flint Michigan (infamous as the location of Michael Moore's movie, Roger and Me), priorities in improving the physical environments in Boston public housing (in relation to dampness, ventilation and overheating, pests, and indoor smoking), and the effects of air pollution caused by cars, trucks, and buses in New York City's Harlem.
One unfortunate aspect, especially for the international reader, is the intensely American focus of the book. Doug Brugge teaches at Tufts University's School of Medicine, while Patricia Hynes is at Boston University's School of Public Health. It is thus perhaps not surprising that fully half of the 12 case study chapters in the book are located in metropolitan Boston, and there is very little mention of research outside the US. Yet some of the most exciting community-based research in environmental health is taking place in poor countries most affected by environmental injustice, and there are strong networks of researchers working at the community level in Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, as well as Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Oceania. The book would have benefited from a more cross-cultural and international selection of chapters. Several of the chapters are also based in the more traditional mode of health surveys that do not seem to break out of the observation and quantification of participants, rather than increasing their knowledge and empowerment.
Having said this, Community Research in Environmental Health is a welcome addition to the literature on public health and environmental policy. It will be of interest to planners (urban, social, health, transportation), community development workers, and social activists, as well as its core audience of public health researchers.
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