Combining Social Science and Environmental Health Research for Community Engagement

Civic Health Project

Technology can connect or divide us. At Civic Health Project, we're dedicated to advancing massively scalable solutions to society's dangerous divisions.

Connecting Research with Community - Civic Innovation Lab

Welcome to Civic Innovation Lab, where we drive social impact through collaborative solutions and empower communities. Join us in fostering sustainable development, co-creating initiatives, and advancing inclusive governance for a better future.

Why Do We Call It Participatory Science? | Smithsonian Environmental Research Center

Citizen involvement in research on technological innovations for health, care or well-being: a scoping review

Citizen science can be a powerful approach to foster the successful implementation of technological innovations in health, care or well-being. Involving experience experts as co-researchers or co-designers of technological innovations facilitates mutual learning, community building, and empowerment. By utilizing the expert knowledge of the intended users, innovations have a better chance to get adopted and solve complex health-related problems. As citizen science is still a relatively new practice for health and well-being, little is known about effective methods and guidelines for successful collaboration. This scoping review aims to provide insight in (1) the levels of citizen involvement in current research on technological innovations for health, care or well-being, (2) the used participatory methodologies, and (3) lesson’s learned by the researchers., A scoping review was conducted and reported in accordance with the PRISMA-ScR guidelines. The search was performed in SCOPUS in January 2021 and included peer-reviewed journal and conference papers published between 2016 and 2020. The final selection (N = 83) was limited to empirical studies that had a clear focus on technological innovations for health, care or well-being and involved citizens at the level of collaboration or higher. Our results show a growing interest in citizens science as an inclusive research approach. Citizens are predominantly involved in the design phase of innovations and less in the preparation, data-analyses or reporting phase. Eight records had citizens in the lead in one of the research phases., Researcher use different terms to describe their methodological approach including participatory design, co-design, community based participatory research, co-creation, public and patient involvement, partcipatory action research, user-centred design and citizen science. Our selection of cases shows that succesful citizen science projects develop a structural and longitudinal partnership with their collaborators, use a situated and adaptive research approach, and have researchers that are willing to abandon traditional power dynamics and engage in a mutual learning experience.

How can citizen science reduce psychological distance to science? Insights from three projects in contested environmental contexts

Citizen science (CS) is a participatory mode of knowledge production, enabling non-scientific actors to contribute to and sometimes contest scientific agendas and interpretations, making it a way to bridge science and society. This paper examines how that potential unfolds by analysing the individual perspectives of citizen scientists through the lens of Psychological Distance to Science (PSYDISC). Drawing on three case studies of contested environmental CS, we identify which contextual aspects of CS shape citizen scientists' experiences of social, spatial, temporal, or hypothetical distance to relevant science, and how these experiences may relate to trust. Our findings underscore the role of science communication as both a channel for dissemination, and as a constitutive element of participatory research; crucial for reducing psychological distance and enabling socially robust knowledge production, especially in contested, policy-relevant science settings.

Crowdsourced Health Research Studies: An Important Emerging Complement to Clinical Trials in the Public Health Research Ecosystem

Background: Crowdsourced health research studies are the nexus of three contemporary trends: 1) citizen science (non-professionally trained individuals conducting science-related activities); 2) crowdsourcing (use of web-based technologies to recruit project participants); and 3) medicine 2.0 / health 2.0 (active participation of individuals in their health care particularly using web 2.0 technologies). Crowdsourced health research studies have arisen as a natural extension of the activities of health social networks (online health interest communities), and can be researcher-organized or participant-organized. In the last few years, professional researchers have been crowdsourcing cohorts from health social networks for the conduct of traditional studies. Participants have also begun to organize their own research studies through health social networks and health collaboration communities created especially for the purpose of self-experimentation and the investigation of health-related concerns. Objective: The objective of this analysis is to undertake a comprehensive narrative review of crowdsourced health research studies. This review will assess the status, impact, and prospects of crowdsourced health research studies. Methods: Crowdsourced health research studies were identified through a search of literature published from 2000 to 2011 and informal interviews conducted 2008-2011. Keyword terms related to crowdsourcing were sought in Medline/PubMed. Papers that presented results from human health studies that included crowdsourced populations were selected for inclusion. Crowdsourced health research studies not published in the scientific literature were identified by attending industry conferences and events, interviewing attendees, and reviewing related websites. Results: Participatory health is a growing area with individuals using health social networks, crowdsourced studies, smartphone health applications, and personal health records to achieve positive outcomes for a variety of health conditions. PatientsLikeMe and 23andMe are the leading operators of researcher-organized, crowdsourced health research studies. These operators have published findings in the areas of disease research, drug response, user experience in crowdsourced studies, and genetic association. Quantified Self, Genomera, and DIYgenomics are communities of participant-organized health research studies where individuals conduct self-experimentation and group studies. Crowdsourced health research studies have a diversity of intended outcomes and levels of scientific rigor. Conclusions: Participatory health initiatives are becoming part of the public health ecosystem and their rapid growth is facilitated by Internet and social networking influences. Large-scale parameter-stratified cohorts have potential to facilitate a next-generation understanding of disease and drug response. Not only is the large size of crowdsourced cohorts an asset to medical discovery, too is the near-immediate speed at which medical findings might be tested and applied. Participatory health initiatives are expanding the scope of medicine from a traditional focus on disease cure to a personalized preventive approach. Crowdsourced health research studies are a promising complement and extension to traditional clinical trials as a model for the conduct of health research.

Nature of Trust

The Nature of Trust Project is a collaboration between Biomimicry for Social Innovation (BSI) and Biomimicry 3.8 that combines biological research with real-world application to discover new models for social innovation using nature’s best strategies for building trust. Working alongside leaders in health equity and social change, the project explored how trust functions in living systems—and what those insights reveal for building stronger human relationships, organizations, and communities.

Community-driven informal adult environmental learning: Using theory as a lens to identify steps toward concientización

This article examines community-driven adult environmental learning in a volunteer watershed stewards program. We look for evidence of elements that portray steps toward “concientización”—the proce...

Projects – discover our non-empty spaces

Fostering spaces for growth is an important part of our trajectory. We seek to harness the combined power of practice, critical inquiry and creativity to address some of the issues of our times - health, environmental awareness, social equality and multilingual, trans-cultural collaborations.

Citizen science in environmental and ecological sciences

Citizen science is an increasingly acknowledged approach applied in many scientific domains, and particularly within the environmental and ecological sciences, in which non-professional participants contribute to data collection to advance scientific research. We present contributory citizen science as a valuable method to scientists and practitioners within the environmental and ecological sciences, focusing on the full life cycle of citizen science practice, from design to implementation, evaluation and data management. We highlight key issues in citizen science and how to address them, such as participant engagement and retention, data quality assurance and bias correction, as well as ethical considerations regarding data sharing. We also provide a range of examples to illustrate the diversity of applications, from biodiversity research and land cover assessment to forest health monitoring and marine pollution. The aspects of reproducibility and data sharing are considered, placing citizen science within an encompassing open science perspective. Finally, we discuss its limitations and challenges and present an outlook for the application of citizen science in multiple science domains.

Home - Coastal Watershed Institute

Protecting marine and terrestrial ecosystems through scientific research and local community, place-based partnerships

Call for Participation: AT Protocol Ecosystem Action Research - Ecosystem Action

A pilot program to facilitate cooperative, research-led innovation in the AT Protocol ecosystem.

Call for Participation: AT Protocol Ecosystem Action Research - Ecosystem Action

A pilot program to facilitate cooperative, research-led innovation in the AT Protocol ecosystem.

ICPA - ICPA 2026

Welcome to the 2026 International Conference on Perception and Action (ICPA). This year, we meet in Omaha, Nebraska, bringing the international ecological psychology community together in a setting that reflects a growing culture of research and innovation.ICPA brings together scholars from around the world who study perception and action as inseparable, mutually constraining processes grounded in organism–environment relations. The program features work spanning affordances, perceptual learning, coordination and control, development, social interaction, ecological design, and methodological innovation.The conference is designed to support sustained dialogue across theoretical, empirical, and applied perspectives—welcoming diverse viewpoints and participants from across institutions, disciplines, and countries. We invite you to join us for a week of scientific exchange and community building as we continue to advance ecological approaches to understanding behavior in real-world contexts.

Continuous Science Foundation | Transform Science Together—Get Involved

Explore how the Continuous Science Foundation promotes open, continuous, and collaborative scientific research through innovative tools, standards, and community support.

Metrics for biodiversity and health policy integration

Despite over a decade of progressive commitments from parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), integrated biodiversity and health indicators and monitoring mechanisms remain limited, hampering achievement of the sustainable development goals and improvements in health and well-being. Adoption of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (2022) and the Global Action Plan on Biodiversity and Health (2024) provide a renewed entry point to shape the way governments approach health and wellbeing and address the environmental burden of disease. This is a critical opportunity that scholars at the health-environment nexus should not miss. This Perspective outlines building blocks to mobilize the field, starting with essential terminology and a scope of metrics needed by governments. We then evaluate elements to be considered in the construction of integrated metrics, including concepts, overarching challenges, a review of scientific hypotheses from an ecological perspective, as well as a set of principles and characteristics for indicators. To raise awareness across parallel communities of practice working at the health-environment nexus, we then briefly examine four approaches to integrated metrics developed by: conservationists, Indigenous scholars, One Health experts, and planetary health experts. We conclude with actionable steps to enhance governance, mobilize funding, and apply integrated indicators in national and global strategies. A broad science community is needed to support national governments to meet global commitments to address biodiversity loss and the environmental burden of disease concurrently. The overall aim of this paper is to contribute to addressing biodiversity loss by effectively linking policy and transdisciplinary practice at the health-environment nexus.