IN THIS COLUMN

• Clare Cannon, College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences
• Katherine Kim, School of Medicine

Two faculty members who received funding from the UC Davis Office of Public Scholarship and Engagement have gone on to win awards for their community-engaged research. The award presentation by the International Association for Research on Service-Learning and Community Engagement took place Nov. 15 during the association’s annual meeting.

• Early Career Award for Clare Cannon, assistant professor of community and regional development, Department of Human Ecology, College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences — She uses community-based participatory action research, among other approaches, to study environmental inequality and health disparities in relation to social inequality in places like Clearlake (Lake County), for a project that received state funding, and Kettleman City (Kings County, in the San Joaquin Valley), for a project supported by the Office of Public Scholarship and Engagement, through its selection of Cannon as a Public Scholarship Faculty Fellow. From her project description for Kettleman City: "Using an innovative participatory process and mixed-method experimental design, the purpose of this study is to ascertain routes of environmental exposure, establish a baseline of community member perceptions on environmental hazards, and to produce a model for community-engaged science that informs environmental policy and regulation." She is featured in Air, Water, Blood: The Power of Community-Engaged Research, a documentary about the Kettleman City project.
• Community Outcomes and Impact Award for Katherine Kim, adjunct associate professor of public health sciences and health informatics, School of Medicine — Recognized for her work to build research capacity and implement interventions addressing health disparities and lack of access to sustainable sources of healthy food within two of Northern California’s Native American tribes, both located in the Klamath Basin, a region known as a "food desert." The Office of Public Scholarship and Engagement provided a Public Impact Research Initiative seed grant for her work with the Yurok Tribe, evaluating a food sovereignty project and developing other, community-driven strategies around food resources. The International Association for Research on Service-Learning and Community Engagement also credited her with engaging with people who are not typically involved in such efforts, like the Karuk Tribe youths whom she equipped with iPods (with special software) to gather data from interviews with community members about their health and related challenges, and access to fruit and vegetables.

Dateline UC Davis welcomes news of faculty and staff awards, for publication in Laurels. Send information to dateline@ucdavis.edu.