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Take Back the Block is a community beautification and citizen science program established for West Baltimore, Maryland (MD) residents. Citizen science, given its focus on data gathering, provides an ideal context to integrate adaptive management while encouraging locally based stewardship through civic ecology practices. The goal of this research is to show how integrating civic ecology practices with adaptive co-management of resources and citizen science can lead to meaningful environmental stewardship. We begin with a structured discussion comparing civic ecology to adaptive management and citizen science. We then share information about our civic ecology-oriented citizen science project that is both consistent with the ten principles of civic ecology practices and strives for adaptive co-management. In many ways, we found that our project aligned well with civic ecology practices with a few changes such as inviting members external to the community to participate and making data collection a component of the stewardship activities. Members of the project were able to achieve some stewardship goals in reclaiming and greening public spaces. In addition, in alignment with adaptive management, they iteratively gathered information that guided projects and serves as evidence and a model of adaptive co-management for communities outside of Baltimore.

ABSTRACTContext:A disaster is indiscriminate in whom it affects. Limited research has shown that the poor and medically underserved, especially in rural areas, bear an inequitable amount of the burden.Objective:To review the literature on the combined effects of a disaster and living in an area with existing health or health care disparities on a community's health, access to health resources, and quality of life.Methods:We performed a systematic literature review using the following search terms: disaster, health disparities, health care disparities, medically underserved, and rural. Our inclusion criteria were peer-reviewed, US studies that discussed the delayed or persistent health effects of disasters in medically underserved areas.Results:There has been extensive research published on disasters, health disparities, health care disparities, and medically underserved populations individually, but not collectively.Conclusions:The current literature does not capture the strain of health and health care disparities before and after a disaster in medically underserved communities. Future disaster studies and policies should account for differences in health profiles and access to care before and after a disaster.(Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2010;4:30-38)

The recent growth and restructuring of the swine industry in the state of Mississippi has raised various environmental and socioeconomic concerns. We spatially examined the location and attributes of 67 industrial hog operations to determine if African American and low-income communities have a high prevalence of industrial hog operations located near their neighborhoods at the census block group level. We used spatial data and cross-classification analysis to compare the prevalence of industrial hog operations in neighborhoods that are primarily African American and low income with the prevalence in neighborhoods that are African American and affluent. We also used logistic regression to evaluate the relationship between the environmental justice variables and the location of the industrial hog operations. The block group characterization showed a high prevalence of hog operations in the four highest quintiles compared with the lowest quintile for percentage African American and percentage poverty. At increasing levels of percentage African Americans and percentage of persons in poverty, there are 2.4—3.6 times more operations compared with the referent group; additionally, scale adjustment to only the hog counties reduces this to 1.8—3.1 more operations compared with the referent group. The inequitable distribution of hog-confined agricultural feeding operations in these communities may have adverse environmental impacts associated with industrial hog production, such as increased health risks and quality of life degradation, as have occurred in other areas having similar facilities. Key words: African Americans, CAFOs, census blocks, confined agricultural feeding operations, disproportionate, environmental health, environmental justice, geographic information systems, hog industry, poor, rural. Environ Health Perspect 110(suppl 2):195-201 (2002). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]