Bridging Silos by Katrina Smith Korfmacher

Author:Katrina Smith Korfmacher
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Environmental policy; Public health; Environmental justice; Health equity; Local environmental policy; Health in All Policies; Policies Systems and Environments; Childhood lead poisoning; Air quality; Built environment; Healthy communities; Health Impact Assessment; housing; housing policy; urban planning; brownfields; food access; food deserts; transportation; southern California; poverty; systems change
Publisher: MIT Press

6 THE Impact Project: Trade, Health, and Environment around Southern California’s Ports

Case Summary

In our globalized world, most consumer products are shipped from where they are made to their final user through a complex “goods movement system” of container ships, trains, warehouses, and trucks. More than 40 percent of all goods imported into the United States enter through the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach in Southern California, making that area a major hub of freight transportation (figure 6.1). The emissions, noise, light, and traffic from goods movement activities pose health risks to surrounding communities and workers. In 2001, the University of Southern California’s Environmental Health Sciences Center, which has a major focus on air pollution research, and community partners hosted a town hall meeting in which participants highlighted these concerns. Subsequently, academic and community partners formed the “Trade, Health, and Environment Impact Project”—or simply THE Impact Project—to elevate health equity as a central concern in goods management decisions. THE Impact Project supported community-based science, built capacity within communities and among academic researchers to knowledgeably participate in decision-making, and translated emerging health research to inform goods movement planning. This case focuses on the resources, approaches, and strategies local stakeholders used to protect community health from the cumulative impacts of a complex system of decisions made in multiple sectors at the local, regional, state, national, and international level.

Figure 6.1

Map of Southern California ports region and locations of THE Impact Project partners

Map credit: Karl Korfmacher

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