The mission of the COEC is to promote environmental health (EH) science literacy and to serve as a non-biased source of scientific information, to provide educational resources and to support connections between SWEHSC investigators and the community. The Community Outreach and Education Core (COEC) chose to focus on two of the required target audiences:

1. Community
2. Public Health and/or Health Care Professionals

The specific focus of work with the community was with American Indian and Hispanic communities, high school students interested in biomedical research, and with schools interested in focusing on EH curriculum.

The specific focus of work with health professionals has been with nurses, pharmacy students, and high school students interested in health careers. The COEC continues to disseminate EH information aligned with the research themes of the SWEHSC and of interest to the target audiences, lung disease, the health effects of UV exposure, arsenic, trichloroethylene, and other chemicals. Lead poisoning awareness materials have been especially important this year, as this topic has engaged the interest of the public related to the many recalls of toys.

To accomplish the mission specific aims were established in 1997 and persist in this funding period to increase the awareness, appreciation, knowledge and understanding of EH sciences and research within members of the target audiences and to guide COEC projects, activities, and services. They continue to be:

1. Identify and disseminate environmental health education resources
2. Provide environmental health sciences information and expertise
3. Develop new environmental health materials in partnerships

Synergistic Cascading Model of Outreach

In addition, COEC developed the Synergistic Cascading Model of Outreach. Based on this model, COEC builds on past accomplishments and capitalizes on existing partnerships and materials to create activities. New projects are created based on components that complement each other and expand the reach and impact of the environmental health message. These activities reach people at appropriate levels of intensity and intimacy based on their preexisting information and interest levels. Intensity means the amount of information delivered. Intimacy relates to the degree of closeness between the audience and the COEC staff. This model promotes multiple uses of materials, over time and many venues. It leverages the accomplishments of one project to meet the goals of other activities with additional audiences.

1. High intensity – high intimacy activities reach a few people, with demonstrated interest, preexisting knowledge, and motivation to learn about EH, with a goal to increase their understanding about environmental health research. Increased knowledge and understanding is assessed by a Pretest Posttest methodology. The COEC does project evaluations with all participants to evaluate and improve these activities.
2. Moderate intensity – moderate intimacy activities reach many people, who have some knowledge and interest in EH, with general information, with a goal to increase knowledge about environmental health sciences. Learning is evaluated with the pretest posttest methodology and with authentic project based activities and other qualitative measure, such as interviews and debriefing the group who participated together. Project evaluations are done for the purpose of activity assessment and to improve the projects.
3. Low intensity – some intimacy activities reach a large number of people, who have little or no knowledge or preexisting interest in EH, with basic information, for the purpose of increasing their appreciation for environmental health science with “Information Walks”, multi-station interactive information displays that reflect SWEHSC themes & COEC partnerships. Appreciation is evaluated by observations, selective mini interviews, and comment collections.
4. Low intensity – low intimacy activities reach very large audiences, who lack knowledge or awareness of the EH, with basic information to increase awareness of environmental health sciences. Often these activities are an outgrowth of any of the previous events, such as news coverage and web pages that provide EH or COEC projects and events. These activities are evaluated by tracking web site hits, especially after events, and by the willingness for reporters to cover COEC events, because the key to raising awareness is repeated exposures.