Community Engagement Core

ABSTRACT – COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT CORE The Community Engagement Core's (CEC) overall goal is to ensure that community member expertise is incorporated into both the design and dissemination of all research and engagement activities. The CEC will accomplish this through a data democracy framework. Data democracy is defined in this proposal as developing procedures to make environmental harms due to algal bloom outbreaks visible through data. The CEC's specific aims include: 1) Improve researcher and community capacity for data democracy; 2) Fill critical data gaps by increasing participation in community science initiatives; and 3) Enhance the relevancy of NC C- CAPE research to environmental health management led by communities. We will produce a data governance charter, create data democracy curricula, convene workshops, and build critical infrastructure to transform existing citizen science projects into a connected enterprise that fills data gaps in order to better understand and reduce environmental health impacts from harmful algal blooms. Efforts will transform anglers and boaters likely to volunteer for citizen science into community scientists using recruitment methods to steer data collection toward gaps that meet the priorities and needs expressed by community members in workshops. The CEC will be governed by a Community Advisory Board consisting of community environmental and health experts from coastal North Carolina and the Internal Steering Committee consisting of the Center Director, Co-Director, Project 3 Leader, and Dr. Cutts as the CEC Director. A full-time Business Manager will devote effort to both the Administrative Core and CEC, to align logistics of Center activities, track Center-wide metrics in support of the program evaluation plan, and accountability to NC C-CAPE partners and stakeholders. Additional hourly staff will train and educate community specialists living and working in coastal North Carolina. NC C-CAPE will provide significant insight to guide efforts to implement effective monitoring approaches, inform guideline values for safe consumption of water and seafood, deliver tools to assess exposure risk, and will leverage community engagement initiatives to fill data gaps to improve oceans and human health.