About Environmental Health Literacy
WHAT IS ENVIRONMENTAL LITERACY?
Environmental Literacy is the desired outcome of environmental education. It is an individual's understanding, skills, and actions that is applied to human behavior in order to develop and sustain an environmentally friendly quality of life.
ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH & ENGAGEMENT
SWEHSC is currently working on various projects with accredited researchers, scientists, universities, and environmental professionals. It is our job to take the information and data from our collaboration projects and develop a method that informs community members of any possible environmental health risks or exposures from our findings.
UNDERSTANDING ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH
SWEHSC and our partners at The University of North Carolina are currently developing a tool that aims to successfully measure an individual's environmental health literacy level (MEHL).
For more information about Understanding Environmental Health click here
WHAT'S BREWING IN YOUR LAB?
What's Brewing In Your Lab, is a collaborative activity between the Community Engagement Core (CEC) and the researchers that make up the SWEHSC.
It is a chance for researchers and the SWEHSC team to discuss current research and findings while coffee and breakfast are provided.
For more information about What's Brewing In Your Lab click here
SCIENCE CAFES
On Thursday, December 7th the Southwest Environmental Health Sciences Center teamed up with a tribe in the Southwest to hold their first REZ Café (REZ- Respectful, Engaging, Safe). The topic of this first café was allergy and asthma in the community as requested by the tribe. Dr. Fernando Martinez and Dr. Mary Kay O’Rourke stood as the panel that engaged in discussion with the community to address any questions and or concerns that they had regarding asthma. The goal of the REZ Café is to facilitate engaging conversation between community members and health and science professionals to address environmental health issues present in the community. We look forward to hosting future REZ Cafés with the tribe on different environmental health topics!
For more information about Science Cafes click here
INFORMATION WALKS
The most common modality is with Information Walks – where environmental health information is disseminated at various stations using interactive approaches.
For more information on Information Walks click here
COURSE OFFERINGS & PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Outreach provides a variety of services for the purpose of professional development. The goals for these courses are to raise awareness of the connections between environmental quality and human health, to develop knowledge about specific environmental health issues, especially those of local interest, and to expand participant interest in environmental health research.
For more information on course offerings and professional development click here
RISK COMMUNICATION
COEC participates in community-sponsored activities throughout the year. The Outreach Core supports community groups in a variety of ways, to provide up-to-date environmental health information and access to Southwest Environmental Health researchers for presentations, and information, and to answer questions of concern to groups and individuals.
For more information on risk communication click here