# Community Engagement Core

> **NIH NIH P42** · UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO HEALTH SCIS CTR · 2022 · $77,935

## Abstract

Project Summary/Abstract, Community Engagement Core
The overall goal of the METALS Community Engagement Core (CEC) is to direct prevention and intervention
strategies to ensure that residents and leaders of our partner communities are involved in every step of the
research at the community level and that researchers are engaged in and with the communities. CEC
synergizes Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) and Western Scientific methods to increase understanding
of multiple-pathway exposures to abandoned uranium mine (AUM) wastes and inform strategies to reduce
releases of hazardous substances – such as uranium, vanadium, arsenic and other metals -- thereby reducing
human exposures. Our current community partners are Blue Gap-Tachee Chapter of the Navajo Nation in
northeastern AZ; Pueblo of Laguna, N.M.; and Red Water Pond Road Community Association on the Navajo
Nation near Gallup, NM. A new community partner – the Cameron Agricultural Ad Hoc Committee (CAAHC), a
project of Cameron Chapter of the Navajo Nation – joined the METALS SRP as a result of a long history of
collaborations with METALS partner Southwest Research and Information Center (SRIC). All four are impacted
by AUMs that date back to the 1950s, range in size from a few acres to 2,700 acres (the Jackpile open-pit
mine on Laguna Pueblo), and have had varying levels of remediation, from virtually none to measures that
reduce immediate safety hazards at the mine sites, but are lacking long-term control of waste piles and
hazardous substances releases. Like the Pueblo of Laguna, CAAHC is developing farming in an area
surrounded by abandoned uranium mines (AUMs) and is concerned about impacts of the AUMs on the safety
of crops grown on the farmlands. CEC collaborates with the METALS environmental projects to collect
meteorological and particulate matter (PM) data to inform air-dispersion modeling and toxicity assessments of
submicron dust particles, and with the biomedical projects to assist in conducting health surveys and
biospecimen collections among community members to assess their exposures to toxic trace metals. Staff of
SRIC and METALS partner Indigenous Education Institute form the CEC’s Indigenous Science Team (IST) that
works closely with these communities, linking them with UNM researchers in the environmental and biological
sciences and research translation. The IST will hold quarterly webinars featuring Native scholars discussing
how principles of Indigenous Science can be applied to remediation of abandoned uranium mines to
supplement innovative remediation strategies proposed by METALS Project ESE Remed and the routine
clean-up methods proffered by USEPA under authority of the Superfund law. Online workshops on
remediation science and policy will empower our community partners to be full participants in remediation
decisions by federal and tribal regulatory agencies. The webinars will aim to create a space for collaborative
design processes, TEK formulations, and place-...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10353208
- **Project number:** 2P42ES025589-06
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO HEALTH SCIS CTR
- **Principal Investigator:** Christopher L Shuey
- **Activity code:** P42 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $77,935
- **Award type:** 2
- **Project period:** 2017-08-15 → 2027-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10353208

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10353208, Community Engagement Core (2P42ES025589-06). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-26 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10353208. Licensed CC0.

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