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 4^th 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 4^th grant…..

Health equity at work: Training at Whatcom County Health Department

Linn Gould (JHA), Liz Mogford (Western Washington University), and Astrid Newell (Whatcom County Health Department)

This session highlights Whatcom County Health Department’s (Washington State) experience in educating and empowering staff to take action on the social determinants of health (SDOH) and  health inequities. In 2010, the Whatcom County Health Department (WCHD) completed a strategic plan with a primary goal of advancing health equity. Reinforcing and supporting a skilled and informed workforce was identified as a key strategy. As part of this strategy, WCHD contracted with Just Health Action (JHA), a non-profit health advocacy organization, to teach a series of 5 four-hour workshops to health department staff over a ten month period. The first workshop was a training on the SDOH offered to the entire Health Department staff. The subsequent workshops were conducted with a “health equity” team to discuss how department staff might reconceptualize their work to focus on taking action on the root causes of health inequities identified in the county. Through the workshops, WCHD staff increased their knowledge about underlying causes of health inequities, learned elements needed to become effective advocates for social change, and acquired skills to take action on the SDOH.  JHA will present its health equity framework, describe the workshop series, explain issues that staff faced in operationalizing SDOH at WCHD, discuss actions taken to improve health equity at both the department and county level, and review evaluations on WCHD’s change in knowledge, attitudes, skills, and intentions to address health equity.

The DV encompasses a roughly 2-by-5 mile area that runs north-south along Seattle’s lower Duwamish River.  The DV is home to a large swath of Seattle’s industrial lands, which generates 75,000 family wage jobs in the city.  At the same time, the community includes some of the most ethnically diverse and lowest income neighborhoods in Seattle, who are disproportionately burdened by multiple sources of environmental pollution.

The project will identify and prioritize the health impacts that affect the DV community. This includes cumulative risks from multiple sources and stressors, and resulting from socio-economic determinants of health, such as employment, education, housing, transportation, crime, and food security, as well as potential impacts to sensitive or vulnerable populations within the community.

The project will: (1) convene residents, businesses, local governments, and other stakeholders to form a sustainable partnership committed to improving the local community’s health; (2) comprehensively identify the sources of health risks and assets in the community; (3) conduct a consensus-based process to prioritize health risks the community partnership will act on; and (4) develop strategies to reduce or eliminate these risks and leverage assets in order to improve the environmental and social health of the entire community.

JHA has had an incredible year and we couldn’t have done it without you.  Thank you!

In 2010, we developed new curriculum, published, presented, revamped our website, and more. Click here to view JHA 2010 in a nutshell.

Many volunteers and organizations helped JHA grow this year.  Special thanks go to Asa Mercer Middle School, Auger Communications, Community Coalition for Environmental Justice, Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition, People for Puget Sound, Sea Mar Community Health Centers, Poverty Race Research & Action Council, Seattle Girls School, University of Washington Community Oriented Public Health Practice program, University of Washington Superfund Program, Whatcom County Health Department and more!

 Just Health Action is a 501 (c)3 non-profit organization and we depend on donations from you. Your year-end tax-deductible contribution will help JHA develop  a new social determinants of  health “train the trainer” program; make social determinants of health digital stories to place online; develop and teach new curriculum on labor/work as a social determinant of health;  pilot an online Environmental Justice curriculum, and so on.  Click here to donate to JHA, in any amount.  Even $5.00 makes a difference.

JHA welcomes your continued participation and collaboration.  We are always looking for volunteers and interns to help us do research, develop new curriculum, conduct evaluations, etc.

 Thank you very much, and the best to all of you for 2011.

The other is at the Latino Caucus – “Bridging the social determinants of health to medical care at a Latino community health center” at 4:30 on Tuesday, November 9^th given by Linn Gould and Dr Julian Perez.

Send Linn an e-mail if you want to meet sometime at APHA.  For more information about APHA scientific sessions, go to http://www.apha.org/meetings/sessions/