EPA and partners have launched the Small Communities – Big Challenges (SCBC) Competition
for local governments in the United States to demonstrate innovative and inclusive strategies
for engaging with rural communities to understand these communities’ environmental public
health issues of concern. The SCBC Competition promotes engagement strategies that support
the attainment of environmental justice, particularly in giving rural communities equal access to
the decision-making process to have a healthy environment. Learn more about SCBC HERE.
Applications are due by January 31, 2023. Find APPLICATION HERE.
Overview of Competition
Up to ten selected winners will each receive $25,000 (totaling $250,000). Five individual Challenge winners will be given a one-year National Environmental Health Association (NEHA) membership.
Local governments are on the frontlines for working with rural communities on environmental public health issues. Rural communities across America have unique perspectives on pressing environmental and public health issues their community faces, particularly on issues that are not well understood, challenging to address, and need additional scientific understanding. This Competition seeks to identify innovative and inclusive approaches local governments have developed for working with citizens, community groups, and other interested parties in rural communities to identify and address environmental public health concerns facing their people. This Competition also seeks to better understand what barriers these communities have associated with these public health concerns.
To gain a better understanding of environmental and public health challenges facing rural communities, EPA and our partners are launching the “Small Communities, Big Challenges” Competition. The goal of this Competition is for local governments to identify innovative and effective ways to holistically engage rural communities around environmental health issues and to identify any associated barriers to better protecting human health. Through increased engagement, this Competition would ideally help local governments and communities better identify and understand rural community-based environmental public health issues, which may help in the protection of the community’s environmental public health. EPA and our partners will use the solutions from this Competition to learn of unique or innovative strategies for engaging with rural communities and of the environmental public health issues that rural communities are faced with. Local governments that participate in the Competition will demonstrate their innovative strategies for engaging rural communities and present collaboratively identified findings from these engagements through a brief engagement strategy report and a short video.
WSG is available to help you prepare your entry.
