Community knowledge in environmental health science: co-producing policy expertise

As lay publics demand a greater role in the environmental and health decision-making that impacts their lives, policy makers are being forced to find new ways of understanding and incorporating the expertise of professionals with the contextual intelligence that community residents possess. This paper highlights how co-producing science policy, where technical issues are not divorced from their social setting and a plurality of participants engage in everything from problem setting to decision-making, can contribute to more scientifically legitimate and publicly accountable decisions. Through a detailed case study utilizing participant observation, ethnographic field work, semi-structured interviews, and reviews of original documents, this paper highlights how residents in a low income, Latino immigrant neighborhood in New York City organized their knowledge to participate in and significantly alter a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency exposure assessment. This paper reveals both the contributions and limits of local knowledge in environmental health governance and how the co-production framework can contribute to more technically credible science and democratically accountable policy.