Antiracist Research and Practice for Environmental Health: Implications for Community Engagement

Background: Communities who experience disproportionate environmental exposures and associated adverse health outcomes have long been aware of, and worked to draw attention to, the role of racism in shaping those risks. A growing number of researchers are focusing on racism as a fundamental driver of racial inequities in environmental health. Importantly, several research and funding institutions have publicly committed to addressing structural racism within their organizations. These commitments highlight structural racism as a social determinant of health. They also invite reflection on antiracist approaches to community engagement in environmental health research. Objectives: We discuss strategies for taking more explicitly antiracist approaches to community engagement in environmental health research. Discussion: Antiracist (as opposed to nonracist, color-blind, or race-neutral) frameworks entail thinking or acting in ways that explicitly question, analyze, and challenge policies and practices that produce or sustain inequities between racial groups. Community engagement is not inherently antiracist. There are, however, opportunities for extending antiracist approaches when engaging communities who are disproportionately harmed by environmental exposures. Those opportunities include a) promoting leadership and decision-making power by representatives from harmed communities, b) centering community priorities in identifying new research areas, and c) translating research into action by applying knowledge from multiple sources to disrupt policies and practices that create and sustain environmental injustices. https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP11384


Introduction
Communities that experience disproportionate environmental exposures and associated health outcomes have long drawn attention to the role of racism in shaping those risks. More recently, public health scholars have begun studying racism as a fundamental driver of racial inequities in health. [2][3][4] By late 2022, 257 declarations naming racism as a public health crisis had been passed at the state, county, and municipal level across 39 states. 5,6 Importantly, federal research and funding entities, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), have joined in making public commitments to address structural racism within their organizations. 7,8 In March 2021, for example, NIEHS and National Toxicology Program Director Rick Woychik announced a new working group on antiracism, diversity, inclusion, and equity. 7 These commitments stand to benefit communities by identifying and addressing institutional policies and practices that reproduce racial inequities in, for example, funding decisions and priorities.
These declarations range from primarily symbolic statementswhat some have termed "performative"-to those pledging specific actions to address structural racism, meaning it is perpetuated through mutually reinforcing social systems. 6 As a whole, these statements point to structural racism as a fundamental social determinant of health. They also highlight both the need and the opportunity to address racist policies and practices within research institutions that may inadvertently reproduce the inequalities that underlie health inequities.
In this commentary, we discuss the implications of these statements and commitments for community engagement in environmental health research. Building on the definition of environmental racism offered by environmental justice movement founder Reverend Benjamin Chavis, Jr.-with which this commentary begins-and the work of scholars of environmental racism (e.g., Payne-Sturgis et al., 4 Pellow,9 and Pulido 10 ) we consider what an antiracist approach to community engagement might entail. In that context, we discuss how to involve community representatives in planning and conducting environmental health research to inform action from an antiracist perspective. Finally, we suggest several promising strategies for partnerships between communities and researchers, as well as for funding and research institutions committed to promoting environmental justice and health equity. These strategies are meant to be exemplary rather than exhaustive. They are grounded in the environmental racism literature, the principles of environmental justice crafted and adopted by delegates to the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit in 1991, 11 and principles of community-based participatory research (CBPR), an approach to community-research partnerships that emphasizes shared power and control. 12,13 Discussion What is Antiracism in Environmental Health Research?
Historian Ibram X. Kendi wrote in his path-breaking book How to be an Antiracist that antiracism does not mean simply being "not racist." 14 Like color-blind or race-neutral approaches, being "not racist" is grounded in the idea that ignoring race can address the problem of racial inequities. These approaches have in common a failure to recognize racism as a system that structures opportunity, unfairly disadvantaging racialized groups and unfairly advantaging those defined as "White." 3,14 In contrast, antiracism means thinking and acting in ways that actively question, analyze, and challenge racist policies and practices. 14 In other words, antiracist practices work to address written and unwritten laws, rules, procedures, and guidelines that are grounded in the idea that racial groups are fundamentally different and that create or maintain inequities between those groups 14 (e.g., the belief that not all racial groups are worthy of the same environmental health protections).
We present examples of such antiracist practices in Table 1.
Building on the above, we argue that an antiracist approach to community engagement is one that is explicit about analyzing and challenging policies and practices that reinforce racial inequities. Achieving environmental health equity requires conducting science that rigorously documents inequities resulting from discriminatory policies and practices. These include, for example, the disproportionate siting of polluting industries, waste sites, or freeways and the less rigorous enforcement of emissions near racialized communities-those that have been ascribed a racial or ethnic identity that is deemed inferior. 15 It also requires using that science to name (see, e.g., Hoffman et al. 16 ) and disrupt (see, e.g., Jones 3 and Payne-Sturgis et al. 4 ) racist policies and practices. Finally, it requires providing opportunities for racialized groups-who have been excluded from boards, commissions, and regulatory bodies-to actively participate in and influence environmental decision-making and enforcement. 11 These tenets of antiracist research and practice resonate with principles of environmental justice, 11 two of which are particularly relevant for this discussion. One demands that public policy be based on mutual respect and justice for all people. The other demands the right to participate as equal partners at every level of decision-making and the restructuring of opportunities to ensure racial equity in that process. Both of these principles inform the strategic actions for antiracist community engagement in research and practice described below.
What Are the Implications of Antiracist Approaches for Community Engagement?
Partnerships between disproportionately affected communities and researchers from academic, governmental, or independent research institutions hold substantial promise for informing action toward environmental justice. 15,17,18 Indeed, community engagement in environmental health science has become a cornerstone of NIH translational research efforts broadly. It is firmly embedded within, for example, NIEHS's 2018-2023 Strategic Plan, which emphasizes community engagement as a means for "ensuring the institute's awareness and understanding of stakeholder priorities, concerns, and needs related to [environmental health science], and . . . ensuring that community members and researchers work together on science that is important to both." 19 As illustrated in Table 2, community engagement is a broad term that can encompass a wide range of goals, objectives, and activities. 19,24,25 Writing nearly half a century ago, Arnstein 26 spelled out a "ladder of citizen participation" that detailed varying levels and goals of including representatives from economically and racially marginalized communities in decision-making processes. More contemporary analyses of the range of community engagement objectives and strategies-including those by Daramola et al., 27 Gibson-Wood, 28 Woolford et al., 29 and Muhammad et al. 30 -demonstrate that community engagement takes many forms, with varying degrees of community power and wide variations in the extent to which antiracist research and practice are explicit goals.

Strategies for Supporting Antiracist Community Engagement
A review of the above critical analyses makes clear that community engagement is not inherently antiracist. Rather, there are opportunities for antiracist approaches to engaging with communities who have historically been marginalized from the process of producing academic knowledge. Below we describe three types of opportunities for community-academic partnerships and for research and funding institutions committed to strengthening antiracist community engagement practices. These approaches emphasize shared power and control, joint responsibility and accountability, and equitable participation and influence, 31 and they offer tools for researchers and funding institutions alike.
Promoting leadership and influence from racialized groups in decision-making, and ensuring accountability. We argue that the first broad component of antiracist community engagement involves explicit promotion of leadership and decision-making power by community representatives. Central to this process is understanding how racialization becomes codified in social, economic, and environmental policies. 32,33 One example is challenging policies and practices that a) systematically exclude racialized groups from institutions of higher education and then b) privilege the voices and perspectives of individuals (disproportionately White) who have been educated in such institutions. 34 Further discussion of policies and practices that institutionalize racial inequities can be found in writings by, for example, Rothstein, 35 Alvarez, 36 Chen et al., 37 and Logue. 38 Partnerships can apply principles and procedures that are designed to support equitable participation, shared power, and community leadership. They can also commit to mutual accountability, which means community and academic partners are ready to interrogate the practices and policies that sustain inequality in power and privilege associated with race, class, or gender and their Table 1. Environmental racism and characteristics of antiracist approaches to environmental health research and practice.
Forms of racial discrimination identified by Chavis 1 that define environmental racism Antiracist approaches Environmental policymaking Identify, document, and work to address policies and practices that create and maintain inequities between racial groups. Enforcement of regulations and laws Identify, document, and work to address differential enforcement of regulations and laws across racialized communities. Targeting of communities of color for toxic waste disposal and the siting of polluting industries Identify, document, and work to address the targeting of communities of color for siting toxic waste disposal facilities and polluting industries. Official sanctioning of life-threatening presence of toxicants and pollutants in communities of color Identify, document, and work to address the presence of toxicants and pollutants in communities of color. Exclusion of people of color from mainstream environmental groups, decision-making boards, commissions, and regulatory bodies Actively work to promote the inclusion of people of color in decisionmaking and regulatory bodies, including involvement in funding and research priority setting at the institutional level.
intersections. 39,40 Specific examples of such principles and procedures include the following: Promote, support, and follow the leadership of community representatives in all aspects of decision-making. This recommendation is grounded in principles of environmental justice, 11 democratic decision-making, 41 and CPBR (see, e.g., Israel et al. 12 and Wallerstein and Duran 13 ). In this process, it is critical that all partners-particularly those who occupy positions of racial, gender, and class privilege-reflect on social positions and power. Critical reflections on social position and power in CBPR partnerships have been published by Muhammad et al., 40 Chavez et al., 39 and Fleming et al. 42 Principles of environmental justice 11 and democratic organizing 41 are important resources in guiding these reflections.
Invest in strengthening capacity and sustaining long-term relationships between partners. Building on the CBPR literature, 13,31,42,43 such investments can take multiple forms. For example, setting aside time during meetings to learn about each other's priorities and strengths, building new skills in collaborative research (e.g., how to develop consensus), and working together to address shared priorities (e.g., how to share data, recognizing and applying the strengths that each team member brings to the table in addressing priorities). Tools include the curricula developed by the Building Equitable Partnerships for Environmental Justice 44 and by Training for Change. 45 Identify and challenge policies and practices that undermine leadership from marginalized communities in research. Principles of environmental justice, 11 democratic organizing, 41 and CBPR 13,31 all call for supporting leadership from those who are most acutely experiencing environmental or health threats, central to antiracist community engagement. Examples of policies and practices that undermine leadership from marginalized groups include both written and unwritten rules that privilege individuals with advanced degrees from elite educational institutions for leadership roles and funding opportunities. Partners should also scrutinize the policies and practices of the educational institutions Foster community-university partnerships. Each Community Engagement Core (CEC) builds and sustains a dialog between the center and its defined audience. Increase awareness of environmental health in communities. Help researchers understand which environmental health issues are important to their identified audiences.
Conduct outreach and research translation in an innovative and culturally appropriate way. Communicate environmental health research findings and concepts to community partners. Convey the voice of communities to researchers within the center.
Research to Action (R2A) funding mechanism 19,23 Assure that communities play a role in identifying and defining problems and risks related to environmental or occupational exposures and stressors that are of greatest importance to them. Communities receive scientific and financial support to conduct high-quality research in partnership with scientists and/or public health professionals.
Characterize distributions and sources of environmental and occupational exposures, as well as distributions of exposure-related diseases. Develop effective strategies for education, outreach, and remediation in response to environmental or occupational threats. Develop ways to prevent such exposures and health outcomes in the future.
Note: NIEHS, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.
themselves, which can exclude individuals from marginalized communities from matriculation or graduation. 42 Finally, policies and practices of funding institutions that create challenges for scholars from underrepresented groups who choose to enter research-focused institutions should be identified and addressed. These include, for example, broadening priorities for health funding to include proposals that focus on structural racism as a driver of health inequities. 46 Support current and emerging community leaders in decision-making venues. Actively working to support the presence and visibility of emerging community leaders in decisionmaking venues, a recommendation that emerges from environmental justice, 11 democratic organizing, 41 and the CBPR literature 13,31 is central to antiracist community engagement: In and of itself, it challenges policies and practices that have marginalized the voices of racialized communities in decision-making processes. This includes actively engaging community leaders in decision-making roles within partnerships and with policy makers. 11,15 This can take the form of, for example, placing youth and adults from marginalized communities in leadership roles in meetings with decision-makers to convey their environmental health concerns, as well as supporting opportunities for representatives from racialized groups to take on formal or informal decision-making roles.
Commit to equitable and fair distribution of resources by, for example, examining the distribution of grant resources across community and academic partners. This can help ensure that both action and research components of joint projects are fairly and adequately funded. It also provides community partners with opportunities to build fiduciary capacity for future joint environmental justice endeavors. 47 Use self-reflexive, formative evaluations to strengthen partnership processes and to ensure mutual accountability and adherence to equity commitments. This recommendation is supported by the CBPR literature, where there is a strong emphasis on co-learning and mutual accountability, supported by selfreflexive, formative evaluation practices. 13,31,40 Self-reflexive evaluation actively engages all partners in evaluating partnership processes and outcomes, and encourages collective identification of aspects of the partnership that are working well, as well as those that need improvement. 12,31,48 Formative evaluation is used to identify opportunities for growth and development within the partnership. 48 The use of self-reflexive formative evaluation is a critical approach for examining and strengthening partnership processes. 49 Muhammad et al. 40 and Chavez et al. 39 present specific discussions of self-reflection to evaluate race and privilege in the context of CBPR partnerships, whereas Coombe et al. 48 provide an example of self-reflexive, formative evaluation processes from the CBPR literature. Partnerships committed to shared leadership, racial equity, and/or the equitable distribution of partnership resources can evaluate their progress toward realizing these objectives by including those domains within routine, systematic evaluations of partnership practices and processes. Results can then be used to engage all partners in considering progress toward these goals and to consider strategies for strengthening the partnership. 48 Identify and challenge institutional policies and practices that create barriers for community representatives in assuming or maintaining leadership and decision-making roles in funding priorities and decisions. Accountability to principles of equity and antiracism must extend to the research and funding institutions themselves. 3,12 A bold example of such an effort to shift power in decision-making is NIEHS's Environmental Justice: Partnerships for Communication initiative, 50 which engaged environmental advocates as members of study sections with the power to influence funding decisions. Such actions have the potential to not only influence funding decisions for specific grant-making cycles but also modify institutional priorities toward more antiracist practices. For example, if community priorities favor research that informs action, institution funding priorities may shift toward a rebalancing of basic/bench vs. more translational research funding.
Centering community priorities in identifying new research questions. In keeping with the tenets of antiracism introduced earlier, a second broad component of antiracist community engagement involves strategies that ensure that research questions are locally relevant and informed by the experiences, insights, and priorities of the communities themselves. This broad recommendation builds from the premise that public health inequities are grounded in local histories, policy decisions, and events. 49,51 Thus, it is critical for community residents to bring their lived experience to bear on research that directly investigates discriminatory policies and regulatory decisions that have created or sustain contemporary environmental inequities. Examples include research 52 conducted by Steve Wing and colleagues at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, working in conjunction with Naeema Muhammed and Gary Grant of Concerned Citizens of Tillery, that addressed the siting of concentrated swine operations in predominantly Black communities in rural North Carolina.
Community involvement in defining research questions recognizes community priorities and insights and produces research that explicitly focuses on the local conditions that influence health. It thus increases the relevance of that research for addressing local-level public health challenges, and it can help to avoid challenges that can arise linked to outside researchers' unfamiliarity with local histories and contexts. 53 Additional examples of environmental health research driven by community priorities have been reported by Narayan and Scandrett, 54 Sampson et al., 23 and Minkler et al. 55 We offer several recommendations for creating opportunities for new research to be informed by the insights, priorities and experiences of community residents below. Examples of such efforts, derived from the literature, are also provided.
Create and support opportunities for meaningful dialog and co-development of new research endeavors between community and academic partners. One example of such an effort is the CBPR Partnership Academy, a year-long mentored opportunity for community and academic partners to work together to develop new research ideas. The Academy, which is led by the Detroit Community Academic Urban Research Center, has received funding from multiple sources, including NIEHS and the National Institute of General Medical Sciences. It offers training on understanding structural and interpersonal racism, antiracist approaches to community engagement, and mini-grant funding to support partnership development and co-development of initial research ideas. 48 Another example is the CBPR Program of the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD), which provides resources to enable community and academic partners to co-develop research questions, conduct studies, and translate the findings to action. Examples of initiatives funded through this mechanism can be found at the NIMHD CBPR website (https://www.nimhd.nih.gov/programs/extramural/ community-based-participatory.html).
Commit to understanding the policies and practices that shaped the social and physical environmental histories of the community and also contemporary community dynamics. Researchers working collaboratively with racialized communities should take responsibility for learning about the social, economic, and political histories of that community, as well as their implications for current environmental justice challenges the community faces. 13,31,42 These include policies and practices shaped by racist ideologies that have contributed to legacy contamination as well as contemporary excess exposures. Although it is imperative that researchers listen to and learn from residents, community members must not bear the burden of educating researchers about those histories. Furthermore, both researchers and research institutions should commit to deepening understanding of environmental racism, environmental justice, structural and interpersonal racism, and antiracist approaches to community engagement (e.g., by offering training to researchers). Excellent resources for developing such understanding include the United Church of Christ's Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States 21 and Toxic Wastes and Race at Twenty 1987-2007, 56 as well as an emerging body of scholarship on antiracist research and practice in environmental and public health. 3,4,42 Offer funding opportunities that center community priorities in research and action. One example is the Native American Research Centers for Health (https://nigms.nih.gov/ capacity-building/division-for-research-capacity-building/nativeamerican-research-centers-for-health-(narch)), whose funding mechanisms require Tribal leadership in CBPR endeavors. 57 This is an important model for research that challenges institutionalized inequities and expand the decision-making power of communities who have historically been marginalized in those processes.
Additional examples include the Research to Action (R2A) funding mechanism, part of the Partnerships for Environmental Public Health research portfolio at NIEHS (https://www.niehs.nih. gov/research/supported/translational/rta/index.cfm), which brings together researchers and community members to build an evidence base around a priority issue for the community and to translate that evidence into action to address environmental health inequities. Examples of currently funded R2A projects can be found at the NIEHS Research to Action: current grantees website (https://www. niehs.nih.gov/research/supported/translational/rta/cfg/index.cfm).
Ensure accountability of research institutions to communities disproportionately affected by environmental racism when developing new research priorities. Research institutions that are committed to antiracist community engagement should critically analyze policies and practices within their own institutions that may undermine such efforts. Such analysis can provide a foundation for creating new policies and practices that support antiracist community engagement, and create mechanisms for accountability. Institutional accountability can take the form of sustained relationships that transcend individual research grants, such as those developed through longstanding stakeholder advisory boards associated with NIEHS Environmental Health Sciences Core Centers (https://www.niehs.nih.gov/research/supported/centers/core/ index.cfm). Institutions can also critically examine tenure and promotion criteria that may disadvantage researchers committed to antiracist approaches to community engagement in their research and practice. 58 Examine and challenge practices and policies within funding institutions that maintain racial inequities in decisionmaking processes, distribution of resources, and research priorities. Such practices might include funding streams that emphasize basic research over the translation of research findings to inform decision-making and review criteria that disadvantage research proposals led by community researchers relative to those led by investigators at large research institutions. Other policies and procedures may contribute to inequitable funding for researchers of color and for historically Black and historically Hispanic colleges and universities. 59 Guidance for funding institutions committed to antiracist practice includes self-reflection on institutional practices and policies, informed by listening to and learning from community leaders. 22 Providing support for community and academic collaborations in shaping research priorities and executing the research itself helps community members become familiar with research tools and supports their use of the resulting data to inform local decisions. 54,55 It also establishes a foundation for ensuring that research in which community members have been meaningfully engaged is used to advance environmental health equity and justice.
Translation of research to action. We argue that a third broad component of antiracist community engagement involves ensuring tangible benefits to communities who invest their time and energy in the research project. A commitment to such translation is encompassed within NIEHS's current strategic plan. 19 Examples of strategic actions toward translation of research to action are described below.
Increase funding opportunities with the explicit objective of producing data that can inform antiracist decision-making processes. Such research and its application can take place at the local level by, for example, applying science to ensure that municipal zoning decisions in residential neighborhoods are based on relevant environmental health science. Data can also be applied at larger scales to inform environmental decisionmaking. Additional examples have been reported by Cacari-Stone et al. 17 and Minkler. 15 Generate research products that explicitly challenge racist practices and policies, including those intended for translation into action and dissemination. Examples include research that a) tests hypotheses related to inequitable distributions of risks and health outcomes or assesses the relative reductions in health inequities realized by various strategies 20 ; b) links historic racist policies and practices, such as redlining, to contemporary environmental exposures 60 ; and c) quantifies health impacts of policies and practices that produce racial inequities in environmental health. 61 Other examples include dissemination and translation of research results to inform individual or collective decision-making. 53 Guidelines for such dissemination practices have emerged from CBPR partnerships. 62 Ensure institutional accountability for the application of research findings to challenging racist policies and practices. Accountability to such ends can be fostered by incorporating an analysis of equity when designing and evaluating research questions, findings, and products (e.g., policy recommendations grounded in the findings). 47 Co-learning, dialog, and self-reflection within partnerships are central to this process, and they can be informed by the rich literature from CBPR on this topic. 12,13,39,40,42,43 Such efforts require that research and funding institutions ensure mutual accountability and long-term commitments to address policies and practices that reinforce and sustain racial inequities.

Conclusions
We argue that antiracist community engagement requires specific attention to interrogating and challenging racist policies and practices. Specifically, antiracist community engagement in environmental health research can be supported by a) developing mutually agreed-upon processes and principles to ensure equitable resource distribution, decision-making power, and representation; b) supporting and amplifying new and existing leadership from within disproportionately impacted communities; c) critically examining and addressing practices and policies that reproduce inequities both within community-academic partnerships and in environmental decision-making processes; and d) ensuring accountability of research and funding institutions to communities who invest their time and energy to support research, by ensuring dissemination and applications of findings to support social change and environmental justice.
Antiracist community engagement requires ensuring there are tangible benefits to communities who engage in the research process, with a focus on applying research findings to promote more equitable protections and health outcomes. We argue this process must engage funding institutions, whose calls for proposals set the stage for research priorities, as well as research institutions whose policies and practices shape the types of research conducted and the types of community engagement that are supported and sustained. It is up to institutions to shift their practices and policies to promote and sustain antiracist approaches to community engagement in environmental health research.