Na’Taki Osborne Jelks, assistant professor of environmental and health sciences at Spelman College, will present “Taking Science to the Streets: Participatory Research Approaches to Improve Environment, Health and Quality of Life in Urban Areas.” This seminar will be held in-person (PUID holders only) and available via livestream (open to all).
Jelks will discuss how residents in an environmentally degraded urban community in Atlanta partnered with academics and non-profit organizations to leverage local knowledge and participatory science to identify, document and analyze the impacts of local environmental hazards and quality of life stressors. This work helped improve municipal services and community-municipality collaboration, while also demonstrating that the democratization of science can help fill critical data gaps about local conditions and community health in environmental-justice communities disproportionately affected by pollutants.