This article examines participants’ responses to receiving their results in a study of household exposure to endocrine disrupting compounds and other pollutants. We study how the “exposure experience” —the embodied, personal experience and understanding of chronic exposure to environmental pollutants— is shaped by community context and the report-back process itself. In addition, we investigate an activist, collective form of exposure experience. We analyze themes of expectations and learning, trust, and action. The findings reveal that while participants interpret scientific results to affirm lay knowledge of urban industrial toxics, they also absorb new information regarding other pollutant sources. By linking the public understanding of science literature to the illness and exposure experience concepts, this study unravels the complex relationship between lay experience and lay understanding of science. It also shows that to support policy development and/or social change, community-based participatory research efforts must attend to participants’ understanding of science.

Background: Environmental health research involving community participation has increased substantially since the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) environmental justice and community-based participatory research (CBPR) partnerships began in the mid-1990s. The goals of these partnerships are to inform and empower better decisions about exposures, foster trust, and generate scientific knowledge to reduce environmental health disparities in low-income, minority communities. Peer-reviewed publication and clinical health outcomes alone are inadequate criteria to judge the success of projects in meeting these goals; therefore, new strategies for evaluating success are needed.Objectives: We reviewed the methods used to evaluate our project, “Linking Breast Cancer Advocacy and Environmental Justice,” to help identify successful CBPR methods and to assist other teams in documenting effectiveness. Although our project precedes the development of the NIEHS Evaluation Metrics Manual, a schema to evaluate the success of projects funded through the Partnerships in Environmental Public Health (PEPH), our work reported here illustrates the record keeping and self-reflection anticipated in NIEHS’s PEPH.Discussion: Evaluation strategies should assess how CBPR partnerships meet the goals of all partners. Our partnership, which included two strong community-based organizations, produced a team that helped all partners gain organizational capacity. Environmental sampling in homes and reporting the results of that effort had community education and constituency-building benefits. Scientific results contributed to a court decision that required cumulative impact assessment for an oil refinery and to new policies for chemicals used in consumer products. All partners leveraged additional funding to extend their work.Conclusions: An appropriate evaluation strategy can demonstrate how CBPR projects can advance science, support community empowerment, increase environmental health literacy, and generate individual and policy action to protect health.

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The goal of this community-based participatory research study was to advance knowledge of and address hazardous environmental and occupational exposures that occur in farm work with the potential to impact the health of pregnant farmworkers and their infants. A cross-sectional survey was conducted on more than 250 female nursery and fernery workers in Central Florida to describe the nature of farm work and prevalence of work-related risk factors that may affect pregnancy outcomes in female farmworkers. Using results from the survey, a culturally and linguistically appropriate healthy pregnancy workshop for farmworker women was developed and piloted. The curriculum integrated information on pregnancy and work-related health hazards (heat and heat-related illness, ergonomic stress, and pesticides) into general information that all women of child-bearing age need regarding optimal reproductive health. Community workers were trained on the delivery of the curriculum in Spanish using an innovative digital format, video vignettes with actual farmworkers as actors, and popular education methods. To test the effectiveness of the curriculum, a new evaluation method using guided sociodramas was piloted. Focus groups were conducted with participants following each training to obtain acceptability on curriculum content, format, and the innovative evaluation method. A total of 4 pilot workshops with an average of 9 women in each workshop were conducted for a total of 37 women who work in agriculture. Following curriculum implementation, participants were asked to break up into small groups to act out and apply new information in staged but potentially real-world scenarios. Curriculum follow-up evaluation focus group results showed that participants found the blend of training methods to be effective and that the sociodramas fostered collaborative and collective action and sharing of information learned. The direct development of this interactive workshop from the findings of the cross-sectional survey provides a culturally-appropriate and relevant tool for educational use in pregnant farmworker women that can be utilized in multiple community settings.Correspondence: Jennifer Runkle, jennifer.r.