Environmental Justice and Reproductive Health
Disclaimer: No content on this site should ever be used as a substitute for direct medical advice from your doctor or other qualified clinician.
Environmental Justice and Reproductive Health
Racial and ethnic minority groups, especially from low-income neighborhoods, are adversely affected by environmental toxic exposures and climate change and the associated health and social complications. Through a general framework, this program educates community members about the historical legacy of environmental injustice and its effects on women and girl’s reproductive health. Black women have persistently higher rates of hormone-related diseases and other reproductive conditions that may be caused or exacerbated by exposure to toxic chemicals such as endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs). In addition, we explore how health outcomes are significantly connected to environmental toxins and products that contain harmful chemicals marketed to Black women and girls. Chemicals such as EDCs are often found in everyday household and personal care products and some food products. Topics of environmental injustice include, but are not limited to, exposures from:
- Toxins and other harmful chemicals in the environment
- Endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs)
- Forever chemicals such as PFAS
- Food justice and harmful chemicals
- Blue and green space access and maternal health
- The impact of climate change on reproductive health
Food Justice
For Black women and low-income communities, food insecurity is not a matter of individual choices—it is the result of decades of structural racism in housing, economic policy, and neighborhood design. Learn more about how malnutrition, harmful chemicals in everyday foods, and limited access to fresh produce all contribute to the reproductive and maternal health disparities Black women face.
Food Access
Where you live can determine what you eat. Redlining, gentrification, and transportation barriers have systematically stripped Black communities of access to affordable, nutritious food, and the health consequences follow. Learn more about how these structural inequities drive food insecurity and deepen the reproductive health disparities that disproportionately burden Black women and girls.