Southeast Halifax Environmental Reawakening

Following a decade of agitation and publicity about environmental racism, President Clinton issued an Executive Order 12898 (February 1994) directing all agencies of the federal government to address environmental justice issues. The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences responded by establishing an environmental justice program to promote partnerships between community-based organizations, local medical care providers and university-based environmental health scientists. Requests for proposals invited applications for projects that would promote community-based education and research. Having already established working relationships with both the Halifax County Health Department and environmental health scientists, CCT decided to seek support under the new program for an expanded effort to empower local and regional community-based efforts to oppose environmental racism. CCT and the Halifax County Health Department were joined by faculty from the University of North Carolina School of Public Health.

Southeast Halifax Environmental Reawakening (SHER) was funded in September 1996. SHER aims to support isolated, rural and semi-rural communities in their efforts to recover fundamental environmental values that have become dormant as rural residents have lost intimate connections with the land. As a community-based effort involving health professionals, the project seeks to link research and action along lines that have been proposed by advocates of the new public health and new epidemiology. CCT's experience working with other community organizations, government officials and academics, and its high level of community-based organization, makes Southeast Halifax well-suited to provide leadership, education and strategic advice for similar communities that are facing intensive livestock operations and other environmental health threats in eastern North Carolina. SHER hopes to impact not only community organizations and public health education in North Carolina, but to provide a model for collaborative research and action on public health and social justice throughout the South, nationally and internationally.

SHER has a multi-faceted design involving:

Participatory community workshops


Medical care provider seminars


Environmental health consultation and support


Community Ground Water Festival


Quantitative environmental justice analysis


Speakers Bureau comprised of community members


Outreach to other Black Belt communities