Documenting health concerns in Marseille's industrial corridor: The benefits of a community-based, multidisciplinary research collaboration
Abstract
Industrial activity in the Marseille metropolitan area, with a population second only to Paris in France, is heavily concentrated and abuts residential communities. Local residents express great concern about the possible... [ view full abstract ]
Industrial activity in the Marseille metropolitan area, with a population second only to Paris in France, is heavily concentrated and abuts residential communities. Local residents express great concern about the possible environmental health impacts, but have limited evidence to assess these concerns. Our research team, with experience in sociology, anthropology, epidemiology, and environmental health science, has collaborated with community residents and local stakeholders in a multidisciplinary, community-based participatory research process to systematically document health issues of residents in these towns.
In this presentation, we argue that multidisciplinary and community-based, participatory work is key for developing research that will be useful to community residents and leaders and will inform action. In this abstract, we list some key examples. From the multidisciplinary perspective, we used sociology research to understand how residents and stakeholders have made meaning from previous studies of environmental health in the region to identify how our ongoing study can fill current gaps in knowledge. We used epidemiology methods to design a rigorous sampling strategy and questionnaire. We used environmental health science and in-depth anthropologic interview data to help identify topics to include in the survey. Our community-based approach improved the research at every step of the process, from helping identify topics to include in the survey, to increasing participation once we began administering the survey, to helping analyze and make sense of the findings.
Out of over a dozen urban environmental health studies conducted in this region, ours is the only one to be multidisciplinary and/or community-based in nature, and while both of these approaches are increasingly common in some countries (like the United States), they remain rare in France and elsewhere in Europe. Based on the benefits we outline here, we encourage greater uptake of these approaches for researchers interested in comprehensively and systematically documenting urban health issues.
Authors
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Alison Cohen
(University of California, Berkeley)
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Barbara Allen
(Virginia Tech University)
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Yolaine Ferrier
(Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Centre Norbert Elias)
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Johanna Lees
(Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Centre Norbert Elias)
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Travis Richards
(University of California, Berkeley)
Topic Areas
I. Research Collaborations 1.1 Scientific collaborations in geography and urban health 1.2 , II. Environmental Health 2.1 Disease mapping 2.2 Assessment of the impact of environmental , VI. Methodologies and technologies 6.1 Methodological issues in health research (e.g., MAU , VI. Research and action 6.1 Collaboration; interaction of researchers; stakeholders 6.2 S
Session
GH-MT-O-02 » Geography and Urban Health - Methodologies (14:00 - Saturday, 2nd April, TBA)
Paper
ICUH_EPSEAL_abstract_2015_11_30.doc
Presentation Files
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