Pieces of the Puzzle: Scaling Community-Engaged Research to a Statewide Level

Community-engaged research has been pivotal in strengthening the impact of research efforts in policymaking by centering the voices of impacted communities to address environmental issues at the local level. CER at a statewide level presents opportunities to elevate local environmental justice issues to scale, but there are issues with how to do this and stay close to diverse local voices that are so much a part of community-engaged research methods. This article discusses the key components and tensions of scaling community-engaged research to a statewide level, using a 2024 equity assessment of the California Climate Investments jointly conducted by the USC Equity Research Institute and The Greenlining Institute as a case study. We posit that engaging in state-level CER can be challenging but equips researchers and local environmental justice leaders to both inform state-level policy recommendations and build state-level power. Below, we detail our experience of soliciting input from local community stakeholders and document how that led to recommendations around new policy, and more profoundly, about the need to build community power. We conclude with lessons learned and recommendations for future efforts to conduct larger-scale community-engaged research for environmental justice.