title: Empowerment Praxis: Community Organizing to Redress Systemic Health Disparities.
abstract: Social and environmental determinants of childhood obesity present a public health dilemma, particularly in low-income communities of color. Case studies of two community-based organizations participating in the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Communities Creating Healthy Environments (CCHE) childhood obesity initiative demonstrate multilevel, culturally situated community organizing strategies to address the root causes of this public health disparity. Informed by a 3-lens prescription-Social Justice, Culture-Place, and Organizational Capacity-contained in the CCHE Change Model and Evaluation Frame, we present examples of individual, organizational, and community empowerment to redress systemic inequities that manifest in poor health outcomes for people of color. These case studies offer compelling evidence that public health disparities in these communities may effectively be abated through strategies that employ bottom-up, community-level approaches for (a) identifying proximal and distal determinants of public health disparities, and (b) empowering communities to directly redress these inequities. Guided by this ecological framework, application of the CCHE evaluation approach demonstrated the necessity to document the granularity of community organizing for community health, adding to the community psychology literature on empowering processes and outcomes.
authors.affiliation: Environmental Studies, College of Social Sciences, San Jose State University, San Jose, CA, USA.
authors.forename: Jason A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Douglas
authors.affiliation: Psychology Applied Research Center, Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
authors.forename: Cheryl T
authors.initials: CT
authors.lastname: Grills
authors.affiliation: Psychology Applied Research Center, Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
authors.forename: Sandra
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Villanueva
authors.affiliation: Center for Healthy Communities, School of Medicine, University of California, Riverside, CA, USA.
authors.forename: Andrew M
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Subica
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D003256:Community Participation / Q000379:methods* / Q000523:psychology*; D005006:Ethnicity / Q000193:education* / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D005431:Florida; D006293:Health Promotion / Q000458:organization & administration; D054624:Health Status Disparities; D054625:Healthcare Disparities / Q000458:organization & administration*; D006801:Humans; D007406:Interview, Psychological; D008297:Male; D009519:New York City; D010043:Outcome and Process Assessment, Health Care; D063766:Pediatric Obesity / Q000208:ethnology / Q000517:prevention & control / Q000523:psychology; D011209:Power, Psychological; D012307:Risk Factors; D012922:Social Change; D012931:Social Environment; D012935:Social Justice
keywords: Built environment; Childhood obesity; Community organizing; Culture; Empowerment; Evaluation; Health disparities; Public health