JHA leaps into 2012
There is a Danish tradition to jump from your couch or chair at the stroke of midnight of the new year. It signifies leaving your worries behind from the previous year and leaping into the new year with all your hopes of exciting and better things to come. JHA leapt into 2012 with excitement.
2011 was a year where JHA was finishing up old grants but it felt like a year of development rather than action. We were written about in the Seattle PI and interviewed on KUOW; presented our work at numerous locations including the American Public Health Association conference in DC; trained interns on a variety of health equity projects; co-wrote a paper on unions and the social determinants of health; was trained in the art of digital story making; participated on several committees including the Governor’s Interagency Council on Health disparities: Environmental exposures and the South Seattle Environmental Justice Committee; and last but not least, wrote more grant proposals than we care to count.
The endless grant writing paid off. We are now actively working on 3 exciting new grants (and 4th one to come but we can’t announce yet):
Duwamish Tribe Environmental Justice Digital Story Project:
JHA is teaching 7 tribal youth how to produce digital stories, 2-6 minute visual narratives that combine images, voice recording, music, and text to describe an important experience. In order to promote Duwamish cultural heritage and environmental leadership, the youth digital stories will provide the Tribe’s view of the cultural and environmental value of the clean-up of the contaminated Duwamish River. The digital stories will be presented by the youth at both the Duwamish Longhouse and at an Environmental Protection Agency public meeting this spring. Funding for this project was supported by the Social Justice Fund.
Duwamish Valley Cumulative Health Impacts Analysis:
Cumulative impacts are defined as exposures, public health or environmental effects from the combined emission and discharges in a geographic area, including environmental pollution from all sources, whether a single or multi-media, routinely, accidentally, or otherwise released. Environmental health impacts that occur within the Duwamish Valley (DV) are the result of over a century of industrial, transportation and shipping-related, and urban stormwater pollution that have contaminated the river’s sediments as well as surface water, soils, and air quality. Although there is significant evidence that the health of residents living in the Duwamish Valley is compromised, a cumulative impacts analysis has never been conducted.
The proposed project will fill a critical gap in understanding the health risks and impacts of exposures in the Environmental Justice communities affected by the Duwamish River Superfund Site in south Seattle. The research project will compile existing data and community-based information on exposures and vulnerabilities for a cumulative health impacts assessment that will aid in (1) strengthening EPA’s Duwamish River Superfund (CERCLA) site cleanup decisions, (2) developing risk reduction strategies (including institutional controls), and (3) improving health outcomes in the surrounding neighborhoods.
The project is funded by an Environmental Protection Agency Environmental Justice grant to the Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition. JHA’s Executive Director, Linn Gould has been assigned as Principal Investigator for this 12 month project.
Duwamish Valley Healthy Communities Project:
JHA and the Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition received an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) grant: the Community Action for a Renewed Environment (CARE) project for the Duwamish Valley (DV). The CARE project will help identify, prioritize and develop action plans to address threats to the community’s health from exposures to soil, air and water pollution as well as lack to healthy food, green space and other amenities. For more information about this project, see our September 13th blog.
Stay tuned to read about our 4th grant…..
