Advancing Community Health

SCSJ works to protect and improve community health by fighting against contamination and addressing long-term pollution from landfills, as well as water and air pollution.

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Addressing Pollution in Communities

Polluting and natural resource extraction industries, like mines and quarries, are often placed in low-income neighborhoods and communities of color. This creates overlapping environmental and economic injustices with detrimental health impacts.

How Redlining influences community health

Historical redlining (the discriminatory practice of color-coding neighborhoods to evaluate risk for home loans) and discriminatory land use policies have resulted in the concentration of polluting and extractive industries in economically and politically disadvantaged communities and communities of color.

As a result, already impoverished communities suffer compounding economic and environmental injustices and detrimental health impacts as harmful industries are concentrated over decades in the same communities.

Area description for a white neighborhood in Durham, N.C., 1937 (Mapping Inequality).

Area description for a Black neighborhood in Durham, N.C., 1937 (Mapping Inequality).

Community Health Cases

All Cases

Filed

The Hairston Clan, et al. v. Stokes County

SCSJ offers communications capabilities and support to community-based organizations to amplify impacted residents’ voices in protecting their communities from contamination and exploitation.