Dr. Jason A. Douglas is an assistant professor of public health in the Department of Health Sciences within Crean College of Health and Behavioral Sciences. Leveraging community-based participatory research frameworks, Douglas works with community-based organizations and residents in underserved Black and Latinx communities to investigate social and environmental determinants of public health disparities.

His current research examines COVID-19-related health disparities, food and housing insecurity-related health disparities, the nexus of crime and violence and legal drug retail locations (e.g., tobacco shops, liquor stores), public park and physical activity disparities in underserved communities, and community organizing practices for advancing health and wellbeing. In his community-engaged research, Douglas has developed and adapted innovative participatory methods for public health, including structured observation and neighborhood mapping approaches for examining novel public health challenges.  

Douglas completed his environmental psychology doctoral training at the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York, wherein he worked with children from underserved communities in New York City and forest-fringe community residents in Jamaica to examine social and environmental inequities that challenge community health and wellbeing. He then honed his participatory research practice through a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-funded postdoctoral research fellowship in the Psychology Applied Research Center at Loyola Marymount University, where he worked with a national cohort of community-based organizations to evaluate community organizing strategies and practices for addressing health, education, and built environment disparities in underserved communities. He extended these research practices as an assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Studies at San José State University before joining Chapman University.

Engaging the World: Leading the Conversation on Environmental Justice is a series of informed, sustained, and enriching dialogues looking at how environmental toxicity and risk disproportionately impact populations based on race, ethnicity, nationality, and social standing. Environmental Justice brings awareness to these disparities, fighting to ensure that every voice is heard, every challenge is addressed, and every community has a seat at the table for a greener future.

Guest: Dr. Jason A. Douglas
Host: Jon-Barrett Ingels
Produced by Public Podcasting in partnership with Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Chapman University.

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[00:00:03] Dr. Jason Douglas: I wake up every morning thinking about these challenges. By making a change today, we can save a life tomorrow. If it's just one life, it's worth everything we've done. As long as that oil drilling site is there, as long as that tobacco shop is within a community of color, as long as there's high traffic density within our communities, as long as these innumerable social and environmental challenges are present unequally, and over-present within our communities, our health has been compromised. That gives me and the folks that I work with a tremendous sense of urgency to recognize, investigate, and address these challenges.

[00:00:47] Host: Chapman University's Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, and Heritage Future present Engaging The World: Leading the Conversation on Environmental Justice. This series explores environmental racism and climate injustice. Since the industrial revolution, we have been choking our waters with waste, poisoning our soil, and contaminating the air we breathe, all in the name of progress. The most vulnerable communities with the least amount of representation and power suffer through the worst effects.

Environmental justice brings awareness to these marginalized communities, their activism, and the path forward fighting to ensure that every voice is heard, every challenge is addressed, and every community has a seat at the table for a greener future. In this episode, we connect with Dr. Jason Douglas, Professor of Public Health at Chapman University. Here is Dr. Jay.

[00:01:49] Dr. Douglas: I'm a health disparities researcher. I work specifically in a community-based participatory research context in and with Black and historically underrepresented communities to investigate the social and environmental challenges that compromise community health and well-being. For example, my work tends to go in many different directions, because it's dependent on where the community's interests lie.

For example, some of my current work investigates the deleterious impact of legal drug outlets, such as liquor stores, tobacco shops, within underrepresented communities. What I do is I work in qualitative and quantitative contexts with community residents to identify some of the challenges that are compromising their health and well-being and follow the community leap to investigate those challenges.

I brought up the legal drug outlets, for example. I was completely baffled, a number of years ago, when I was using a technique called participatory mapping, which I've adapted and specialized for public health research, to learn that community residents were particularly concerned about crime and violence around tobacco shops within the South Los Angeles community. We had never heard of anything like this before.

We knew that liquor stores were a problem, that tracks the tract of a research. This was a completely new type of legal drug property that residents claims compromised health and well-being. Based off this qualitative approach to working with residents to identify some of these challenges, what we did is then we followed the community lead, and we scaled up our analyses.

This analysis started at a small scale, community level, neighborhood, if you will. What we did is we actually looked at crime and violence proximal to tobacco shops across the greater South Los Angeles area, a community of upwards of 1 million people, largely Black and Brown community.

Lo and behold, what we found, community-wide, from working with residents in this small area context was that they nailed it. They knew exactly what was happening on the grounds. There was more crime and violence around tobacco shops in many contexts than other legal drug properties, and more crime and violence when compared to other types of venues that carry tobacco and alcohol products. It's these types of investigations.

Again, working with residents to investigate their interests and following their lead, that leads to some of the most, at least in my experience, novel public health findings that empower residents to advocate for policies and practices that benefit their health and well-being. In that one example that I brought up, residents were able to take data from that project and go to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, and advocate for policies that reduce the proliferation of these tobacco shops within their communities. They were successful in advocating for the passage of two policy motions. This is an ongoing challenge.

[00:05:44] Host: I know that you had talked about this ongoing challenge that there's this cycle, you brought this up in the lecture of identifying the challenges, confirming them, advocating for them, and then starting all over. I, and in your work, specifically, the participation of the community is so vital. Is there a challenge to get the community to participate on some of these more macro challenges when the struggle to just pay rent or mortgage or if they're lucky to pay mortgage or putting food on the table or maintaining a stable job, or childcare, or COVID are such a pressing, immediate thought that they're all going through.

This speaks, looking at climate change as a whole, looking at this thing that is so far beyond us when a lot of us are just struggling with the basics.

[00:06:57] Dr. Douglas: You pose a great question, JB. Many of the conversations that I have with residents follow this thread. For example, why should I care about the placement of an oil drill proximal to where I live, when what I really care about is soap, socks, the basics? Those challenges can really put research in question. Are we looking at the right thing?

I think that the difference with the type of research that we are doing is that it is based off resident interests. They already have a vested interest in addressing the challenges that they're raising. Now, to your point, that doesn't change their immediate socio-economic contexts. What we do see is sometimes residents are challenged to show up to meetings, for example, to participate in data collection.

What we try and do, as a collective-- and when I say a collective, I'm referring to a group of community-based organizations, residents, community advocates, faculty, investigators, public health officials. What we try and do is build a collaborative that is mutually supportive in multiple ways. Not only are we developing research and advocacy efforts to investigate resident interests, and push forward advocacy efforts, but we're also developing these research collaboratives to support residents in numerous ways.

For example, in some of my partnerships with the Community Coalition, for example, we work with youth residents. In many cases, these youth residents benefit from after-school programs, they benefit from stipended supports in research programs. Residents can also benefit financially from participation in these efforts. In our collaborative tobacco shop investigations, for example, we will provide compensation or incentives for residents to participate. It's respecting residents' interest but also respecting their time by providing the incentives for participation. I'm a strong advocate  of providing these incentives and respecting residents' time because, as you said, sometimes it's about getting food on the table. It's not about launching some broad-scale environmental justice or public health advocacy effort. Those concerns are immediate.

Simultaneously, by working with a cadre of community-based organizations, these organizations are also providing benefits for communities that they see in the long term. I think realizing these long-term benefits really encourages and empowers residents to participate in any way they can, whether it be signing a petition or assisting in data collection efforts, or marching to Town Hall to advocate for improved community health and well-being.

[00:11:02] Host: Now, your work specifically with the mapping of, call it, I'm going to paraphrase but legal drug sources, came from the need of the community and the voice of the community. I imagine there's still a level of awareness or ambivalence that exists in the community. I don't want to say ignorance because I don't want to be offensive, but how important is it to share and create awareness for those community members who are just living their lives with these problems surrounding them, whether it's environmental justice issues or the crime of the tobacco stores and the liquor stores?

[00:11:52] Dr. Douglas: Great question, JB. This is part of why I love what I do and love the organizations and folks that I'm blessed to work with. You nailed it again. Many of the residents that I work with, many of the organizations that I work with, will take our findings and not only advocate for policies that advance health and well-being, but they'll launch popular education efforts.

They'll host town hall meetings. They'll go door to door with informational flyers and pamphlets to disseminate our research findings, to disseminate resident interests, and to learn more about how people think and feel about some of these challenges. Whether it be, again, the location of an oil drilling site in your backyard, a locally unwanted land use, illegal drug outlets, and its impacts on our communities.

Every time we propose a project, research is a small part of that proposal. At least half, if not more, of what we're thinking through is, how are we going to engage community? When I say "We," again, I'm talking about community residents that are leading these efforts. I'm talking about the community-based organizations that have staff that have dedicated their lives to these communities. Faculty and academics are just a small part of this.

What we're trying to do is build a community base of informed residents that can take their local neighborhood-level expertise and pair that with a broader understanding of what they're seeing in their everyday community, what they're seeing on their everyday engagements within their neighborhoods, how those challenges are affecting their health and well being because we're not all immediately aware of this.

It's not entirely apparent that, by just walking outside, you could be breathing polluted air. This isn't necessarily about knowledge or perception or understanding or even caring. This is something that's invisible, often odorless.

It's important to disseminate information, share that information, garner community perspectives and be inclusive, include residents, and say, "I value your thoughts and ideas." Perhaps, if we can find some common ground and our values overlap, we can collaborate and work together to address these challenges.

[00:15:00] Host: I want to talk about this sense of a ticking clock. When we look at climate science, especially lately, whether it's the scientists that are talking about it or more than likely it's the media that's presenting this sense of a timeline of a ticking clock of things need to change before this point or else-- Whether that's for the benefit or the detriment, I'm not to say, but there is this sense of things need to happen soon.

With your work, is there this sense of urgency of things need to happen sooner than later? It's the health of a community, so, of course, it's obvious, but do you feel a ticking clock? Do you feel that there is a point of no return?

[00:16:02] Dr. Douglas: Specifically in the context of climate or generally speaking in terms of public health, resident health?

[00:16:09] Host: With regards to public health in your research, in particular, and then whether you see that on the grander scale of climate science?

[00:16:19] Dr. Douglas: I'm going to answer this with a heavy heart, JB. Every morning, I wake up with a sense of urgency because the environmental injustices, the public health challenges, the things that we see within our communities that challenge our health and well-being, present those challenges on a daily basis, and they compromise the health and well-being of our communities every day.

COVID is a clear example of this. We're in the middle of a pandemic. We keep on thinking we're seeing the end of it, and then hopefully we will. Throughout the course of this pandemic, Black and Brown lives, we have lost so much life across the states, the country, broadly speaking. We lost a year of life across the nation in 2020. Black communities lost more than two years of life, more than double, just to paint a very vivid picture.

I wake up every morning thinking about these challenges. By making a change today, we can save a life tomorrow. If it's just one life, it's worth everything we've done. Just to answer your question very quickly, yes, it's always urgent. As long as that oil drilling site is there, as long as that tobacco shop is within a community of color, as long as there's high traffic density within our communities, as long as these enumerable social and environmental challenges are present unequally and over-present within our communities, our health is being compromised. That gives me and the folks that I work with, a tremendous sense of urgency to recognize, investigate, and address these challenges.

[00:18:34] Host: I'd love for you to talk a little bit, I know you've mentioned it before, but what role does the government play with your work? What role does politics play with regard to your research and your work?

[00:18:54] Dr. Douglas: It's very political. I'll be quite frank, on multiple levels. I'll say, in promising ways. Some of the challenges, again, that the residents that we work with recognize and want to change, our local, for example, local elected officials aren't always aware of these challenges. What we have is the opportunity to not only work with residents to investigate these challenges and engage in popular education, to disseminate our results across communities within the scientific literature, but we're also working hand in hand with many of our local elected officials to extend the knowledge base and inform them of what's happening on the grounds. I go back to the tobacco shop or smoke shop example because I think it's a really powerful one.  When we were able to empirically verify the public health challenges posed by smoke shops and tobacco shops within South Los Angeles, we were able to garner the support of many locally elected officials including Marqueece Harris-Dawson, who is in Council District 8 and is now using our data and results to advocate for improved health and well-being across the council district.

This is really promising work. In other contexts, for example, I've collaborated with investigators from other universities as well as other communities to look at vaccine hesitancy within our communities.

We've garnered tremendous support from folks like Congress Lady Bass, who looks at this work and says, "Yes, I've been advocating for increased vaccine uptake and the inclusion of Black and Brown people in identifying what are the challenges in promoting uptake." To have this support from our elected officials is fantastic. Now, there are obviously challenges on the other side as well, but I prefer to look at the positive side of this.

I have the support for our work and our collaboratives is amazing and promising.

[00:21:36] Host: I want to talk about the importance of cross-discipline approach with regards to your research. In the lecture with Chapman, you were connected with a professor of ecology and a professor of psychology, and I'd love to know how those fields intersect with your work and how important reaching across the spectrum of study is.

[00:22:10] Dr. Douglas: It's critical. Again, as I mentioned earlier, my work is thoroughly rooted in social and environmental determinants of health disparities. I'm a disparities researcher. The work that I do, the work that I collaborate on, is thoroughly interdisciplinary and by working with folks across the disciplines. We're able to really push the knowledge base in many different directions.

JB, I'm currently collaborating with-- you mentioned a couple, but I'm collaborating with folks that are in education leadership, in pharmacy, public health, obviously, environmental sciences, health sciences, psychology, across the disciplines. By bringing in these multiple fields of thought and frameworks, we're able to, more holistically, address these challenges through different lenses.

I collaborated with urban planners. They can take us through the ins and outs of policies that may challenge health and well-being in the planning context, whereas the public health folks can make connections between place and health. The psychology folks can help us to make explicit connections between mental health and well-being and place. Those are just a few examples.

For me, being able to work with folks across the disciplines, first of all, is a blessing. As you know, I love knowledge, I love learning. I learned so much from all of these brilliant folks, and I want to include residents in this as well, when we're speaking about working across the disciplines because I really want to send this point home. I learned so much by working with folks in communities.

Let's call them experts in neighborhoods, experts in local contexts. For me, that's another discipline and a blessing to be able to work with folks in those contexts.

[00:24:35] Host: Is it your father who is from Jamaica?

[00:24:38] Dr. Douglas: That's right.

[00:24:38] Host: Your connection, your Jamaican heritage, Jamaica is this rich artistic cultural place with art and textile and definitely music. How important, or what role do arts play in the fight for environmental justice and with your work as well?

[00:25:02] Dr. Douglas: JB, another fantastic question and a lot of fun. I think some of this goes back to both popular education, disseminating information, as well as advocacy efforts. Many of the communities that I work with will express some of the challenges that we're faced with through music, through arts. These things bring folks together.

When they host town hall meetings, they might start off with music. They might present works of art that illustrate how they think and feel about the challenges within their community that really-- and there's a long history of this. Music, throughout history, has been a wonderful mechanism for expression. I think, as has arts, visual arts, performance arts.

I think what we see within our collaboratives is the ability to harness these forms of expression and share information in a way that resonates with so many people. Not everybody wants to read a research paper. Not everybody wants to read a policy brief, but if you put it in a song or a piece of art, maybe that's going to grab someone's attention.

I've been so encouraged to see this with my community partners, especially in their efforts working with youth. For example, Communities for a Better Environment, there are Youth EJ group. They leverage art and performance in their organizing efforts and their outreach efforts. So do folks at the Community Coalition, folks at SCOPE LA. I could just list a number of community-based organizations that are doing this wonderful work.

You know what? At the end of the day, JB, I get to walk around with these really cool t-shirts that have these forms of artistic expression that tell a very strong story about what communities experience and where they see themselves going, and what the future should and can look like.

[00:27:32] Host: If you would like to continue the conversation, visit chapman.edu/wilkinson to hear the full lecture with Dr. Jay and his colleagues. For more socially-conscious content, visit publicpodcasting.org or follow us on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you podcast.