Community Environmental Health Priorities

In 2024, we worked with our Community Advisory Board (CAB) to identify priority environmental health issues for the City of Rochester and the Finger Lakes region.

A list of priorities was sourced from a free-response survey of CAB members and then organized into a list of 9 priorities for the City of Rochester and 8 for the Finger Lakes region. The CAB then ranked the identified priorities in order of their importance in 2024 and 10 years in the future.

Download the report

What we found

The CAB members identified the following set of community environmental health priorities for the City of Rochester:

1. Housing quality and environmental exposures such as lead paint, mold, etc.
   (72% of respondents ranked this in the top 2)
2. Difficulty accessing resources (such as healthy food and healthcare) due to the built environment, including lack of alternative transportation infrastructure
   (88% of respondents ranked this in the top 3)
3. Inequities in environmental exposures and access to resources (environmental justice)
   (100% of respondents ranked this in the top 5)
4. Greenspace and urban tree canopy
5. Heat (occupational exposure and/or indoor and outdoor temperatures)
6. Legacy pollution (such as brownfields, hazardous waste, contaminated soil)
7. Outdoor air quality
8. Drinking water quality
9. Water infrastructure and flooding

During this process, several overarching themes emerged in addition to these priorities. Climate change impacts many environmental health issues. Social determinants of health, such as safe neighborhoods, access to healthcare, education, violence, and poverty, interact with these issues. Inequities in exposure and access to resources, or environmental justice, were identified as both a priority and an overarching issue related to other environmental health priorities. Suggested solutions included workforce development, information and education, and policy change.

Download a summary of the key findings

Download the report for future rankings for the City of Rochester and the list of priorities for the Finger Lakes region.

Did you use this report or find this information useful? We’d love to hear about it! Please consider sharing how you used it by contacting us at Rebecca_lauzon@urmc.rochester.edu.