Haynes et al. Identifying a key community contact is not unusual in accessing a population of concern; in fact, it is a mechanism frequently used by other environmental health researchers (Brown 2003). As outlined by Brown (2003), academic–community relationships require that the members of the research team have a sincere interest in the community and its research agenda and that they become well acquainted with the history of the commu­ nity’s struggle with its environmental issue. Because UC is approximately 3.5 hr from Marietta, Ohio, the academic research team and community members engaged in fol­ low­up conversations by phone and e ­ mail. The conversations involved sharing informa­ tion between the community and the aca­ demic institution. The NCA expressed its concern about the community’s exposure, previous experiences with the ATSDR, U.S. EPA, and Ohio EPA, and its desire for a health study. At an initial meeting with the NCA, E.N.H. discussed the known health impacts of Mn exposure. This information sharing laid the foundation of the partner­ ship and demonstrated a mutual respect for each member’s expertise, thus applying CBPR principles by acknowledging the community as a unit of identity and steering the potential research agenda onto the issues most relevant for the community. Forming a community advisory board. The next step in building an academic–com­ munity partnership was forming a commu­ nity advisory board (CAB). The NCA director and other members assisted in identifying key members of the community to form a CAB. Each individual was contacted by E.N.H. and invited to participate. The first CAB meeting was organized by the NCA director and held in a neutral location within the community—a meeting room in a church in Marietta, Ohio. The initial CAB meeting was attended by 28 local residents whose occupations included homemaker, carpenter, industry representa­ tive, health department official, and a local college professor. Each attendee signed a UC Social and Behavioral Institutional Review Board (IRB) consent form to participate in the focus group. After introductions, the academic research team initiated the meeting by provid­ ing a summary of the current state of the sci­ ence regarding the known health effects of Mn exposure, primarily from studies conducted on occupationally exposed adults. An active dialogue then ensued, and the CAB posed the following question: “What questions do you have about air quality in your community?” A member of the academic research team recorded responses on a flip chart. The CAB identified a myriad of research questions, including the following: • Does Mn affect cognitive development of children? 1366 • Does Mn affect behavior and school perfor­ mance in children? • Does Mn affect the health of seniors? • Where is Mn found in the environment (food, water, dairy products, meat)? • What is the safe level of exposure? • How does time spent outdoors and exercise affect dose? • Is Mn exposure related to health problems such as respiratory diseases, autoimmune diseases, blood disorders, and cancer? Although the CAB was composed of a diverse group of residents, the CAB had a unified vision: to understand their exposure. Using consensus decision making, we iden­ tified the primary research question of the CAB: “Does Mn affect the cognition and behavior of children?” The academic research team communicated to the CAB the impor­ tance of collecting preliminary data if a pro­ posed large­scale epidemiologic study was going to be developed for the community. Throughout our initial meetings and discus­ sions, we applied the CBPR principles of fos­ tering a colearning environment and began building the research capacity of each partner. J o i n t l y c o n d u c t i n g p i l o t r e s e a r c h . We planned two unique pilot studies: a community­wide survey and a pilot research study. The pilot study would be useful to determine the suitability for an epidemio­ logic study in the community and to ascertain levels of Mn in biological specimens, and a research survey would validate the concerns presented by the CAB and determine if the CAB does in fact represent the views of the community at large. The CAB played a key role in developing and executing both of these preliminary studies. Together the academic research team, community partners, and the director of OCA, with input from NCA members, devel­ oped a survey instrument for communityw­ide distribution. The academic research team and the NCA community partner informally inter­ viewed CAB members and experts in envi­ ronmental health research to determine the questions to be asked and to identify poten­ tial responses for closede­nded questions. The team identified standard survey instruments for these topics when possible. The initial draft of the survey was developed by the academic research team and distributed to the com­ munity partners for their input. During the first phone conference with the community partners regarding the survey draft, the aca­ demic research team realized that the draft survey was not addressing community needs, so multiple revisions were made to the survey. The community partners provided insight into their community, providing new survey ques­ tions and community­appropriate multiple­ choice responses. A specific example is the question pertaining to barriers faced by the community in improving the community’s air. The community partners provided all potential responses. Thus, the final version of the survey was a result of multiple phone conversations and e­mails between the academic research team and community partners, with contin­ ued feedback from OCA and NCA members and UC environmental health researchers. To echo the CAB’s interest in research, the survey asked respondents the following question: “If a research study was conducted in your community related to air quality, what health outcomes do you think would be most important to study?” They were pro­ vided a list of seven possible health outcomes and an option to write in “other.” In order to assess the risk communication channels appropriate for the Mariettaa­rea com ­ munity, respondents were queried about their use of mass media and interpersonal sources of information about risks related to industrial emissions in their community. Our goal was to determine their informations­eeking behav ­ ior, including information sources related to local industrial emissions, their level of trust in these information sources, and how they rate the level of knowledge from each infor­ mation source. We used a modified version of the questionnaire created by McCallum et al. (1991). We asked respondents to rate their perception of the amount of information received, knowledge, and trust regarding local industrial emissions for the following sources: news reporters, friends and neighbors, people you know who work for a local industry, local government officials, state government officials, chemical industry officials, medical doctors, research scientists, teachers, Web sites, environ­ mental groups, town meetings, church meet­ ings and announcements, and other. Possible responses were “a lot,” “some,” “hardly any,” or “none.” A draft of the survey instrument was reviewed by environmental health experts, the CAB, and OCA and then piloted on sev­ eral NCA members to test the completeness and readability of the survey instrument. The CAB identified the appropriate chan­ nels to distribute recruitment information. We distributed announcements to newspapers and radio stations and made paper copies available at key locations, including local grocery stores, libraries, colleges, and community buildings. The questionnaire was made available online using a Webb­ased survey tool (SurveyMonkey®, Palo Alto, CA). In addition, we mailed approxi­ mately 250 surveys with return postage to individuals provided in a directory of NCA contacts. The information collected from this questionnaire was anonymous and was approved by the UC Social and Behavioral IRB. The survey was available over a 5­ month period, from June through October 2007, throughout Washington County; Marietta is the county seat of Washington County. ovlume 119 | number 10 | October 2011 • Environmental Health Perspectives