Building Interdisciplinary Partnerships for Community-Engaged Environmental Health Research in Appalachian Virginia

Emily Satterwhite, Shannon Elizabeth Bell, Linsey C. Marr, Christopher K. Thompson, Aaron J. Prussin, Lauren Buttling, Jin Pan and Julia M. Gohlke
Additional contact information
Emily Satterwhite: Appalachian Studies, Department of Religion and Culture, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061, USA
Shannon Elizabeth Bell: Department of Sociology, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061, USA
Linsey C. Marr: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061, USA
Christopher K. Thompson: School of Neuroscience, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061, USA
Aaron J. Prussin: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061, USA
Lauren Buttling: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061, USA
Jin Pan: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061, USA
Julia M. Gohlke: Department of Population Health Sciences, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061, USA

IJERPH, 2020, vol. 17, issue 5, 1-16

Abstract: This article describes a collaboration among a group of university faculty, undergraduate students, local governments, local residents, and U.S. Army staff to address long-standing concerns about the environmental health effects of an Army ammunition plant. The authors describe community-responsive scientific pilot studies that examined potential environmental contamination and a related undergraduate research course that documented residents’ concerns, contextualized those concerns, and developed recommendations. We make a case for the value of resource-intensive university–community partnerships that promote the production of knowledge through collaborations across disciplinary paradigms (natural/physical sciences, social sciences, health sciences, and humanities) in response to questions raised by local residents. Our experience also suggests that enacting this type of research through a university class may help promote researchers’ adoption of “epistemological pluralism”, and thereby facilitate the movement of a study from being “multidisciplinary” to “transdisciplinary”.

Keywords: environmental health; interdisciplinary research; transdisciplinary research; community-engaged research; Appalachia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/5/1695/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/5/1695/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:17:y:2020:i:5:p:1695-:d:328758

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().