Health inequities in environmental justice communities: relevant indicators to reflect a variety of health threats

Background Residents of environmental justice (EJ) communities often suffer significant health inequities due to pollutants and to adverse social conditions. However, methodologies for assessing such communities seldom account for both kinds of factors. While traditional environmental health risk assessments use single-pollutant, single-source measures of chronic risk alone, this project develops a technique for assessing “overall risk burden” in EJ communities. Cumulative risks from aggregate (that is, multi-agent, multi-pathway, multi-source, over time) exposures are combined with an index representing a wide range of social determinants of health. The work is being piloted in West Port Arthur, Texas, an EJ community flanked by petrochemical plants and a seaport, and characterized by poverty and disadvantage.