Neasha B. Graves
Environmental Health Outreach Manager, Center for Public Engagement with Science
Biography
Neasha B. Graves has built her career around educating vulnerable populations, with particular focus on environmental health and adult literacy. In her role as the environmental health outreach manager in the in the UNC Center for Public Engagement with Science (CPES), she works with colleagues to develop and implement environmental health programming aimed at helping public health professionals and communities they serve understand risk factors for environmentally related disease, including asthma, environmental cancers and metal- and phthalates-induced disease. This work is part of CPES’s research translation and community engagement strategies and activities in partnerships with the UNC Center for Environmental Health and Susceptibility (UNC CEHS), the UNC Center for Early Life Exposures And Neurotoxicity (UNC CLEAN) and the NC Division of Public Health’s (DPH) Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program.
Graves facilitates collaborations with state and local public health and housing agencies to develop environmental health education programming, co-convening dozens of stakeholders in meetings of the NC Lead and Healthy Homes Outreach Task Force. Similarly, for UNC CEHS and UNC CLEAN, she and her colleagues convene stakeholder advisory boards that are comprised of state and local public health agency partners with expertise in public health policy, women and children’s health, and community outreach and engagement.
With a goal of influencing the career development of undergraduate and graduate students, Graves helps lead initiatives to increase opportunities for students in public health, environmental health and other fields. She supervises interns attending UNC, as well as interns in a partnership with NC Central University’s Public Health Education Department. Recently, she led an effort in the UNC Institute for the Environment (UNC IE) to design and implement the application and award process for a new research award aimed at increasing graduate level environmental justice and environmental health disparities research projects in marginalized N.C. communities.
Education
MPA, North Carolina Central University, Durham, NC
B.A., History, Meredith College, Raleigh, NC