Developing a Curriculum for Change: Water and Environmental Health Literacy in a Native American Community

Background: Knowing about risks of water contamination is the first step in making informed choices to protect our health and environment. Researchers were challenged with sharing water quality research this information with local communities.

Objectives: The purpose of this article is to describe the formative evaluation used to develop and implement an Environmental Health Literacy (EHL) summer camp and afterschool water curriculum for Native American (NA) children in the fourth through sixth grades.

Methods: Community and university scientists, elders, and educators came together and co-developed a summer camp and afterschool program for local youth to address the issues of water and its importance to the tribal community.

Lessons Learned: Research partners must continually balance research needs with relationships and service to the community. The health literacy framework used to develop our curriculum also complemented our community-based participatory research (CBPR) approach and may benefit other partnerships. CBPR helped to build trust and culturally center the intervention.

Conclusions: Project partners built on the mutual commitment to “do what we say we will do” within the community context. Using the CBPR approach provided a strong framework for the collaboration necessary for this project. Trust relationships were key to the successes experienced during the development, implementation, and multiple revisions of this intervention.