CEC coordinates and facilitates interactions between our diverse community partners and appropriate policy decision-makers from local, state, and federal government. Most CEC partners have already established relationships with key decision-makers (elected officials and their staff, regulators, and other influential policymakers). 

While community organizations may advocate and lobby for specific legislation or regulations, CEED’s role is to provide technical assistance and translation of specific scientific knowledge that can inform their actions and ability to participate in decision-making processes. Our partners understand how crucial scientific evidence is to sound decisionmaking,  prioritization, and implementation of interventions to improve public health. One key example of this approach is the recent approval of the nation’s first environmental justice (EJ) legislation . 

We help partners realistically appraise, interpret, and apply available evidence, including recognition of the challenges involved in applying what is often incomplete scientific under standing of complex, realworld systems involving cumulative impacts of multiple environmental and social stressors. In so doing, the CEED CEC uses sophisticated translational approaches that include consideration of the nuances of both the available science and the needs of community partners.