Boston University Superfund Research Program

BU SBRP Community Outreach Core and Research Translation Core PI, Madeleine Kangsen Scammell, has coauthored a paper recently published in Social Science & Medicine. “Tangible evidence, trust and power: Public perceptions of community environmental health studies” is the product of a collaboration with members of the Brown University SBRP Community Outreach Core. The paper presents findings from three focus groups conducted in communities north of Boston that have been the subject of two different environmental health studies. Results suggest that lay knowledge, informed in varying degrees by the experience of what the authors term tangible evidence, creates a lens through which communities interpret a health study's findings. Tangible evidence includes descriptions offered by interviewees of an exposure or environmental threat, such as soot and the visible presence of the coal-fired power plant, or first-hand knowledge of disease or illness such as breast cancer. The differences in reliance on tangible evidence were related to participants' sense of trust in public officials, and the institutions responsible for conducting health studies. The research was funded by NIEHS grant number 5 R25 ES12084.