Published in:
Open Access
01-12-2012 | Meeting abstract
Health inequities in environmental justice communities: relevant indicators to reflect a variety of health threats
Authors:
John Prochaska, Hilton Kelley, Stephen Linder, Ken Sexton, John Sullivan, Lexi Bambas Nolen
Published in:
International Journal for Equity in Health
|
Special Issue 1/2012
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Excerpt
Residents of environmental justice (EJ) communities often suffer significant health inequities due to pollutants and to adverse social conditions. However, methodologies for assessing such communities seldom account for both kinds of factors. While traditional environmental health risk assessments use single-pollutant, single-source measures of chronic risk alone, this project develops a technique for assessing “overall risk burden” in EJ communities. Cumulative risks from aggregate (that is, multi-agent, multi-pathway, multi-source, over time) exposures are combined with an index representing a wide range of social determinants of health. The work is being piloted in West Port Arthur, Texas, an EJ community flanked by petrochemical plants and a seaport, and characterized by poverty and disadvantage. …