- PRRAC — Connecting Research to Advocacy

PRRAC Publications, Research, and Conference Reports

Strategies for Health Justice: Lesson for the Field (Edited by Megan Haberle and Heidi Kurniawan, November 2018)
The Call for Environmental Justice Legislation: An Annotated Bibliography (Jennifer Bisgaier and Jennifer Pollan, July 2018)
Fair Housing and Environmental Justice: New Strategies and Challenges (Megan Haberle, Journal of Affordable Housing and Community Development Law, January 2018)
E quity Considerations in Climate Adaptation Plans: A Call for Advocacy (October 2017)
Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing: A Platform for Public Health Advocates (American Journal of Public Health, June 2016)
CERD Treaty Report: Unequal Health Outcomes in the United States (2008)
Organizing to Address Minority Health Disparities: A Directory of State and Local Initiatives (2008)
Rebuilding a Healthy New Orleans: Final Conference Report of the New Orleans Health Disparities Initiative (May 2007)
There is No Such Thing as a Natural Disaster: Race, Class, and Hurricane Katrina (Gregory Squires & Chester Hartman, ed., Routledge 2006)

Recent Advocacy

Coalition letter to USCCR on environmental justice enforcement at the EPA (August 2017)
Coalition comments: New Federal Strategy to Reduce Childhood Lead Exposures (November 2017)
Incorporating the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing obligation into EPA’s 2020 Environmental Justice Action Agenda (July 2016)
Coalition comments on Department of Interior Environmental Justice Plan (May 2016)
Title VI comment letter on EPA-HUD AFFH coordination (March 2016)
Shriver Center/Loyola petition for rulemaking on lead based paint protocols (February 2016)
Coalition comments on EPA Draft Title VI Policy Papers (March 2013)
HUD’s responsibility to residents of Flint, Michigan (March 2016)
Coalition comments on EPA Draft Title VI Policy Papers (March 2013)
Fair Housing Comments on HUD EJ Strategy (November 2011)

Policy Briefs

E quity Considerations in Climate Adaptation Plans: A Call for Advocacy (October 2017)
Moving to Healthier Neighborhoods: Options for Local Advocacy (May 2014)
Prescription for a New Neighborhood? Housing Vouchers as a Public Health Intervention (July 2010)
Two Simple Changes to Improve Health Outcomes in the Section 8 Voucher Program (April 2011)

PRRAC Materials on Transportation Related Topics

Field Report: Deconstructing Segregation in Syracuse? (May 2018)
- Supplement: “Looking at the legacy of I-81 through the lens of the recently digitized Green Book”
Equitable Transit Oriented Development (March 2015)
Comments on DOT Proposed Rule on Statewide Metropolitan Transportation Planning (October 2014)
“Disadvantaged Communities Teach Regional Planners a Lesson in Equitable and Sustainable Development,” by Richard A. Marcantonio & Alex Karner (January 2014)
Transportation Equity Caucus comments on FTA New Starts Guidance (March 2013)
Comments on Federal Transit Administration proposed rule on transit oriented development (March 2012)
PRRAC comments on EPA draft report, “Creating Equitable, Healthy, and Sustainable Communities”(March 2012)
Transit-Oriented Development in High Opportunity Communities (May 2011)
The “Housing + Transportation Index” and Fair Housing (July 2010)
Comment letter to Dept. of Transportation on Discretionary Grants NOFA (June 1, 2009)
Letter to Secretaries Donovan and LaHood on smart growth and fair housing (April 6, 2009)
Fair Housing and Transportation Principles (March 2009)
The Interstates and the Cities: Highways, Housing, and the Freeway Revolt, by Raymond Mohl (2002)
[9110]

Selected Poverty & Race Journal Articles

“Racial and Ethnic Residential Segregation as a Root Social Determinant of Public Health and Health Inequity: A Persistent Public Health Challenge in the United States” by Robert A. Hahn (April-June 2017)
Major Title VI Agreement Reached in Corpus Christi by Joseph D. Rich (April-June 2016)
“Title VI of the Civil Rights Act at 50: An Unfulfilled Promise at EPA” by Marianne Engelman Lado (July/August 2014)
Walk a Mile in My Shoes: Los Angeles Celebrates Anniversaries of the Civil Rights Movement by Robert Garcia (July/August 2014)
Stealth Capture: The Civil Rights Movement and the Implementation of Medicare by David Barton Smith (April-June 2016)
Mossville, Louisiana: A Community’s Fight for the Human Right to a Healthy Environment by Michelle Robert (May/June 2011)
Health Care and Indigenous People in the United States by Michael Yellow Bird (November/December 2008)
Towards a Fair Health Movement: a special Poverty & Race Forum issue (September/October 2005)

View the Environmental Justice, Health & Transportation Archives

PRRAC works to support environmental justice advocacy, with a focus on strong national and local partnership strategies. Harmful and inequitable environmental hazard siting, enforcement disparities, and other EJ issues have often been closely connected to residential segregation and concentrated poverty, as well as racial bias and disparities in access to power structures. Our work to improve these conditions is an important complement to other strategies that serve as immediate interventions to improve health (in particular that of young children), such as voucher mobility and strong standards for where subsidized housing is sited. We are grateful to the Kresge Foundation for its support of this work.

In addition, we have a particular focus on the formulation of innovative policy solutions that bridge the silos dividing issue areas – including housing, environmental justice, health, and transportation (as well as education).

The Poverty & Race Research Action Council (PRRAC) is a civil rights law and policy organization based in Washington, D.C. Our mission is to promote research-based advocacy strategies to address structural inequality and disrupt the systems that disadvantage low-income people of color. PRRAC was founded in 1989, through an initiative of major civil rights, civil liberties, and anti-poverty groups seeking to connect advocates with social scientists working at the intersection of race and poverty…Read More