# Community Engagement Core

> **NIH NIH P42** · DUKE UNIVERSITY · 2020 · $178,633

## Abstract

The ultimate goal of the Community Engagement Core (CEC) is to facilitate prevention and intervention
strategies that result in community-level reductions in exposure to targeted contaminants, either through
changes in behavior that reduce or eliminate pathways to exposure or through community-driven actions to
remediate the sites of contamination. The CEC will accomplish these goals by connecting communities
impacted by environmental contaminants to the research conducted by the Duke University Superfund
Research Center (DUSRC). Given the focus of the DUSRC on the ways in which exposure to hazardous
substances during pregnancy or early childhood can lead to serious health consequences in later life, the CEC
will focus on preventing early life exposures. To achieve this goal, the CEC will partner with the communities of
Cradock, in Virginia, and Badin, Castle Hayne and others in North Carolina. We will work with these
communities to collaboratively devise optimal strategies for reducing and preventing exposures in pregnant
women and children to: mercury and PCBs from subsistence consumption of fresh water fish from
contaminated waterways; from air, soil and water borne PCBs, PAHs, TCE, heavy metals, etc. from former
metal processing industrial sites; and from pesticides and soil contaminants, particularly heavy metals and
PAHs, in community and school gardens built on brownfield and other contaminated sites. The CEC will take
an innovative approach to community engagement, one that will be highly participatory and bidirectional,
involving communities in conjunction with DUSRC Investigators and Trainees in determining the questions we
ask, the methods we use to answer them, and the ways in which the results we generate will be applied. The
DUSRC CEC’s model for community engagement will inform our approach to accomplishing each of our
specific aims and will follow a similar set of iterative steps, tailored to each project and community: 1) identify
and form partnerships with at-risk communities; 2) work collaboratively with the community to understand
current sources of exposure; 3) work collaboratively with the community to analyze pathways to exposure; 4)
apply results to develop and implement community-led action plans and materials to disseminate more
broadly; 5) analyze and report on outcomes and disseminate models broadly.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9942431
- **Project number:** 5P42ES010356-18
- **Recipient organization:** DUKE UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Elizabeth Shapiro
- **Activity code:** P42 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $178,633
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** — → —

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9942431

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9942431, Community Engagement Core (5P42ES010356-18). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9942431. Licensed CC0.

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