Gaetke Presents at Annual NARPM Meeting

(Aug. 2008) - UK-SRP Community Outreach Core Director Dr. Lisa Gaetke was one of five SRP representatives nationally who were invited to speak at the Environmental Protection Agency's annual meeting of the National Association of Remedial Project Managers on July 10th in Portland, Oregon. Gaetke's presentation came during a session entitled Working Together: Aligning Communities, Academia and EPA and focused on UK-SBRP's partnership with Kentucky's Cooperative Extension Service (CES).

Because of its status as a Land Grant University, the University of Kentucky is in the rare position of housing both state-of-the-art medical research facilities and the educational and outreach capabilities of the CES. UK-SBRP's Research Translation and Community Outreach Cores have utilized this synergy to forge a close relationship with Kentucky’s Cooperative Extension Service. Through this partnership, UK-SBRP has tapped CES expertise and dissemination resources in a number of ways to improve communication with affected communities. Among the ongoing initiatives that have emerged from this partnership are the implementation of Superfund Community Action through Nutrition (SCAN) programs near Superfund sites, the development of “train-the-trainer” programs to help CES Family and Consumer Science agents better educate their populations about using nutrition to mitigate chemical exposures, the joint publication of technical and low-literacy informative publications, and the creation of opportunities for health and environmental science graduate students to interact directly with the populations most affected by their research.

Gaetke's entire presentation is available online as a PowerPoint slideshow.

For more information about the Community Outreach Core, contact Lisa Gaetke at 859-257-1031. To learn more about the Research Translation Core, contact Anna Hoover or Stephanie Jenkins at 859-257-1299.