Air Justice in Louisville

One of the root causes of health disparities in Louisville, Kentucky, is air pollution, a disparity rooted in the city’s history of environmental racism. Residents who engage in local environmental justice efforts face other systemic barriers, all of which intersect in the jargon-filled public notices about air pollution that circulate throughout the city. This article discusses a feminist environmental health literacy coalition formed to promote health literacy and create translations of public notices in plain language. Our preliminary theory of Air Justice maintains that health literacy is a social practice and that intersectional coalitions provide rhetoric of health and medicine (RHM) scholars with a local approach to scholarship that mirrors the diverse and multiple situatedness of the communities in which they work.