Prioritizing Equity in EPA Research

Published February 21, 2024

Last year, the White House announced Executive Order 14091: Further Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through The Federal Government and Executive Order 14096: Revitalizing Our Nation's Commitment to Environmental Justice for All. EPA is incorporating these historic presidential actions by embedding equity, civil rights, and environmental justice in all aspects of our work to protect human health and the environment.

EPA’s Equity Action Plan is in response to Executive Order 14091 and the earlier Executive Order 13985 (2021): Executive Order On Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government.

EPA’s Equity Action Plan outlines activities occuring across EPA that support and enhance our current efforts to increase equitable outcomes for underserved and overburdened populations. EPA research efforts include providing new funding opportunities, developing cutting-edge research projects focused on environmental justice topics, making improvements to our community science programs, and providing technical support to underserved communities. Read about the research activities and opportunities that help EPA to fulfill our Equity Action Plan below.

Providing Grants for Environmental Justice Research

EPA research grants are one of the extramural research avenues to engage top research scientists and students to support EPA’s mission. To date, more than 30 Science to Achieve Results (STAR) grantees have been awarded or anticipate awarding over $50 million. One example is the $21.4 million in research funding awarded to 16 institutions for community-based research on how climate change may compound adverse environmental conditions and health stressors in communities with environmental justice concerns.

Integrating Participatory Science into EPA Research and Program Implementation

Participatory science engages the public in advancing scientific knowledge by formulating research questions, collecting data and interpreting results. EPA supports community engagement in participatory science to help inform actions that benefit community health and well-being. EPA is establishing the Community-Engaged Research Collaborative for Learning and Excellence (CERCLE) in Edison, New Jersey, as a center for this type of place-based, co-produced research and knowledge for action.

EPA has also awarded over $28 million in STAR Grants to researchers advancing participatory science efforts.

Other helpful resources for community participatory scientists include:

Using Participatory Science at EPA: Vision and Principles is a strategic approach for using participatory science to strengthen environmental protection.
Quality Assurance Handbook and Toolkit for Participatory Science Projects is a handbook to help organizations starting or growing a participatory/citizen science project.
EPA’s Air Sensor Toolbox, established in 2014, is a comprehensive website which provides the latest science and information about air sensors and resources that enable use of the technology by air quality managers, researchers, educators, community scientists, and the public.
Air Sensor Loan Programs provide technical support (i.e., educational resources, lesson plans, resource guide, quick start guides, answers to frequently asked questions, introductory materials on air quality and air sensors) and sensor loans for community scientists and air monitoring agencies.

Addressing Cumulative Impacts in EPA Research

Meet Our Researchers

Computational biologist Cavin Ward-Caviness helps determie which populations are most susceptible to air pollution.

Meet our other health researchers.

EPA program offices and regions are investigating cumulative impacts through scientific research, developing and applying methods and tools, conducting community-based projects, and exploring innovative concepts and practices. As outlined in the Strategic Research Action Plans for 2023-2026, there are over 90 cumulative impacts research projects underway to address the needs of EPA program and regional offices, states, Tribes, and external partners. These projects focus on researching exposure to air pollution, ecosystem services, children’s and maternal health, building resiliency and community capacity and more. Projects may integrate quantitative and qualitative methods, community engagement, community participatory science, disproportionate burdens, historical drivers, intersectional issues and emerging practices.

EPA’s report, Cumulative Impacts: Recommendations for Office of Research and Development Research (ORD), provides recommendations for EPA’s cumulative impacts research to improve scientific methods and tools. It also includes suggestions for how ORD can provide management support to facilitate this complex research.

EPA launched the Healthy and Resilient Communities Research Webinar Series in early 2023 to communicate research and tools intended to help communities and local decision makers, including states and Tribal nations, protect their assets and reduce vulnerabilities. Early webinars focused on cumulative impacts-related research, such as the webinar on EPA’s Available Tools to Advance Our Understanding of Cumulative Impacts. The webinars are free and typically held on a quarterly basis on the second Tuesday of the month from 3:00 to 4:00 p.m. ET. You can watch the recordings of past webinars and you can sign up to receive notifications about upcoming webinars. EPA looks forward to resuming the series in March 2024.

Creating Decision-Support Tools and Methods Focused on Environmental Justice

EPA researchers also work to develop and deliver decision-support tools that can be used for identifying community-level environmental risks and assessing cumulative impacts from environmental and demographic stressors particularly on the community level. The following tools are a few examples of EPA’s available tools for communities:

EJ Screen is an environmental justice mapping and screening tool based on nationally consistent data and approaches that combine environmental and demographic indicators in maps and reports.
EnviroAtlas provides geospatial data, easy-to-use tools and other resources related to ecosystem services, their chemical and non-chemical stressors, and human health.
Environmental Quality Index (EQI) helps researchers better understand how health outcomes relate to cumulative environmental exposures that typically are viewed in isolation. EQI presents data in five domains: air, water, land, built and sociodemographic environments.
Equitable Resilience Builder supports communities in resilience planning with a focus on equity. The application engages users in a guided process to inclusively assess local hazards, equity, and the resilience of built, natural and social environment systems.

For more information about EPA’s tools, use the Science Models and Research Tools (SMaRT) Search, a searchable inventory of freely available models, tools and databases.

Additional Efforts to Advance Equity Through Research

Bipartisan Infrastructure Law

Through the historic investment of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law resulting in water infrastructure investments, EPA is delivering more than $50 billion to improve our nation’s drinking water, wastewater and stormwater infrastructure to cities, towns and territories across the country, many of which are in disadvantaged communities. EPA researchers will provide support for small and/or disadvantaged communities including technical support for treatment options for emerging contaminants, such as PFAS, and technical support for identifying lead service lines. Research to identify lead service lines will refine existing approaches and identify accurate but lower-cost, alternative approaches to detect lead service lines.

There are more activities occuring across EPA, such as improving internal processes, to meet the commitments outlined in the Equity Action Plan. You can read the most recent Equity Action Plan for a comprehensive progress report and additional priorities.

Related Resources

Read the Equity Action Plan

Basic Information about Lead in Drinking Water

Children's Environmental Health Research

Cumulative Impacts Research

Environmental Justice Research

Healthy and Resilient Communities Research Webinar Series

Health Impact Assessments

Human Health and Climate Change Research

Lead (Pb) Research

Research on Community Resilience to Climate Change

Science Matters: EPA Researchers Share Approaches to Identify Lead Service Lines