The “Partner” Objective

Overview

When community members are confronted with chronic environmental contamination (CEC), they may be concerned about its potential psychosocial consequences. They should be empowered to collaborate in intervention efforts. Their involvement should also inform environmental risk management decisions.

Public health professionals can support community resilience to stress and other hardships by collaborating with community leaders and groups. They should work to anticipate and address community members' practical, informational, emotional, and social needs. Building resilience also requires considering health disparities and integrating health equity goals into long-term interventions.

Community resilience is the ability to withstand and maintain community integrity in the face of stressors. It also involves the capacity to creatively respond and reorganize. Although many community resilience frameworks are designed for acute crises, their emphasis on engagement and problem-solving remains relevant. Additionally, their emphasis on strong social networks often makes them applicable to CEC.

Secondary objectives

The "Partner" objective has two secondary objectives:

1. Work with community leaders and build community groups.
2. Provide informal outreach and support settings.

Work with community leaders and build community groups

Communities with stronger social ties and attachment to place are more resilient in the face of environmental contamination. Identify and leverage local assets and resources to build resilience, especially to secure funding and assistance to address local needs. These resources can include:

• Community leaders (e.g., elected officials, faith leaders).
• Civic, nonprofit, and advocacy organizations.
• Others, such as mental health and disaster relief services.

Provide informal outreach and support settings

Augment government-organized meetings and learning opportunities by partnering with community groups to provide informal outreach, support settings, and resources. Case studies suggest that informal outreach strategies can better meet people’s psychosocial needs. These methods often outperform formalized public meetings led by government representatives.

For instance, health fairs or "teach-ins" in prominent public locations can advance health education goals. Additionally, support groups have effectively addressed mental health, and information needs within the CEC context.

Community resilience

The community resilience approach focuses on:

• Community members working together to respond to and recover from emergencies.
• Merging of other community efforts that build social, economic, and health well-being.
• Diverse network of government and nongovernmental organizations in preparing for, responding to and recovering from disaster.
• Collaboration and engagement with the community for problem-solving.
• Self-sufficient community through neighbor-to-neighbor connections and strong social networks.

Engaging the community

Enable community ownership of collaborative solutions and leverage existing strengths while listening to and responding to the community’s needs. Such empowerment efforts are vital because the community typically needs to sustain its own resilience-building activities after initial operations have subsided. In addition, community advocacy in the CEC context can facilitate recovery.