Workshop
Environment, Health, Participatory Research
Venue: Society for Participatory Research in Asia, New Delhi Date: February 26-28, 2019
Background
With rapid economic growth, agricultural-to-industrial and rural-to-urban transitions, and inadequate and weak regulatory mechanisms, India faces many environmental challenges, which are affecting the health and quality of life of its population. Improving environmental health research and its translation to practice in India is essential to not only address the environmental health burden of disease, but also to meet India’s SDG targets. Most of the research-based evidence linking environmental exposures to human health impacts comes from European and North American contexts. There is a need to generate local knowledge in diverse contexts of India to inform local practical actions and decision-making. Given the scope and urgency of India’s environmental health challenges, evidence generation, research translation, and evidence- and practice-informed policy making will need to occur simultaneously. To achieve this, traditional investigator-led academic research methods do not suffice.
Community-based Participatory Research (CBPR) is a collaborative approach that involves all stakeholders in the process of undertaking research. It recognizes the unique strengths that each brings, aims to combine knowledge with action to achieve social change to improve outcomes that, in this case will strive to eliminate environmental and health disparities.
Key principles of effective CBPR
The CBPR method which aims to address the environmental health challenges entails few key principles that include:
Key benefits of CBPR
Successful CBPR partnerships demonstrate tangible benefits, few of them include:
Over the past 20 years, CBPR has gained global recognition and acceptance as a means to provide rigorous and valuable knowledge relevant to human and environment health. Increased community and stakeholder participation – hallmarks of this approach – have proven to be an effective tool to enhance our knowledge of the causes and mechanisms of disorders having an environmental etiology and also to reduce adverse health outcomes by affecting policy change and developing culturally appropriate intervention strategies.
India has some of the world’s leaders in participatory research methods, and communities have been engaged in public health research and intervention. But, participatory research methods have not been used so readily in conduct of environmental health research, which is still in its infancy in India. In the US, many researchers have adopted CBPR methods to conduct environmental health research, and several research funding agencies encourage the use of CBPR methodology.
Key Objectives
This workshop will bring together US and Indian researchers and practitioners with expertise and interest in participatory research approaches to:
Environmental exposures that will be discussed during the workshop include – Air Pollution, Pesticide Exposure, and Environmental Disasters. The workshop will highlight the use of CBPR in reducing the disease burden associated with these environmental exposures in the US and how those methods can be adapted for India.
This international workshop is co-hosted by Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA), India and University of Iowa, USA with support from Indo-US Science and Technology Forum and the US National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.
The workshop will be held on February 26-28, 2019, at the PRIA office, Tughlakabad Institutional Area, New Delhi.
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