A UGA College of Family and Consumer Sciences researcher has received one of four grants from the Gulf Research Program of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to support projects aimed at enhancing resilience among coastal communities in the Gulf of Mexico region.
Denise Lewis, an associate professor in the FACS human development and family science department, was awarded a grant of $3,076,000 to engage with Cambodian and Laotian families in Mobile, Alabama, to determine how individual, family and community-level strengths and vulnerabilities contribute to community health and how individuals use social networks for formal services to respond to environmental stressors and disasters.
Other UGA co-investigators are Desiree Seponski from FACS and Curtis Harris, Sarah DeYoung and Tawny Waltz from the UGA College of Public Health.
The project will develop culturally responsive interventions and strategies for increasing community capacity and resilience. Lewis will work in conjunction with the Cambodian Association of Mobile and the Lao Association of Mobile.
“A key benefit of this multi-disciplinary, community-based participatory research project is the inclusion of community leaders and decision-makers in each step,” Lewis said. “Our project moves beyond collaboration to a partnership of co-creators of science and practice using culturally responsive methods that identify, prevent and/or
mitigate the effects of catastrophic environmental events to create effective and sustainable outcomes across these two coastal Cambodian and Laotian communities.”
All four funded projects will increase understanding of community attributes that influence resilience and develop tools and strategies communities can use to strengthen their resilience, according to a press release from the NASEM.
Gulf Coast communities are frequently challenged by a variety of unique environmental stressors stemming from both natural- and human-caused disasters. In recent years, such events have included droughts, hurricanes, sinking coastal areas and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. While adverse events are a major challenge for any community, the degree to which communities effectively respond and recover can differ significantly.