Cultivating Science and Environmental Justice

What is the talk about?

With more than 355,000 hazardous waste sites and 550,000 abandoned mines in the U.S., it is not uncommon to find residential areas located next to them.  Discover how Dr. Monica Ramirez-Andreotta engaged affected communities using gardens and citizen science. Community members investigated and evaluated the contaminants in their areas while cultivating gardens to improve the environmental health of their neighborhoods.

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About our presenter

Dr. Monica Ramirez-Andreotta

Monica Ramirez-Andreotta is an assistant professor of Environmental Science with a joint appointment in the College of Public Health at the University of Arizona. As the Director of Project Harvest and Gardenroots, she is building citizen science programs to increase public participation in environmental health research, developing low-cost environmental monitoring tools to improve exposure estimates, and designing effective risk communication and data report-back strategies to improve environmental health literacy. Dr. Ramirez-Andreotta’s philosophy is that to successfully engage communities and students, it is essential to address critical environmental health problems identified by the community, and then work collaboratively through the problem-solving and research process.