WashU researchers in biology, public health, and environmental engineering are studying the health benefits of community garden participation. This research aims to strengthen community partnerships and position WashU as a university recognized for expertise in community garden research.
The idea for this research formed nearly a decade ago. Zorimar Rivera-Núñez, a public health researcher studying metal exposures and their health effects, partnered with Browne Professor of Environmental Engineering Dan Giammar to investigate contamination in community gardens. Around that same time, a community organization called Seeds St. Louis was quickly expanding throughout the region, and what had begun as scattered gardens evolved into a network of over a hundred gardens across the city. “The emergence of both these community gardens and research interests at the intersection of public health and environmental science established an interest in research on the health benefits of community gardens,” explained Giammar.
Interest in this topic was renewed this year through a convening of the Nature and Health Alliance Ignite project, led by Amy Eyler and Dereky Hoeferlin. This brought together Giammar, Lauren and Lee Fixel Distinguished Professor of Public Health Lora Iannotti, and Associate Professor of Biology Rachel Penczykowski. Iannotti brought expertise in food systems and nutrition for vulnerable populations, while Penczykowski contributed knowledge of plant disease and outreach experience in gardens throughout the St. Louis region. Together with Giammar, these researchers recognized that community gardens represented an intersection of their complementary research interests.
This research examines a variety of potential health impacts. Iannotti’s focus centers on the downstream health effects of community garden participation — whether produce grown in community gardens will be acceptable to community members, what behavior change strategies might encourage consumption, and how gardens might promote dietary diversity. “Many populations around the world, as well as in St. Louis, are consuming too many processed foods at the moment,” Iannotti noted. “What this can do is encourage a move toward or shift to having access to healthy produce, and that could be a really impactful outcome.”
Giammar and his PhD student Elmira Ramazanova’s research addresses environmental safety. A decade-old dataset from 20 community gardens in St. Louis revealed that gardens with raised beds filled with imported, clean soil exhibited comparatively low metal concentrations. Additionally, older gardens generally showed higher contamination levels, likely reflecting less stringent soil-sourcing quality control two decades ago. One particularly significant finding involved the prevalence of bioaccessible lead, or the portion of lead that the human body could actually absorb. “Even for those [gardens] that are high, it’s at most 5%, and in most cases, less than 1% of the lead is in a bioaccessible form,” Giammar explained. This prevalence is considered to be low.
Penczykowski contributes expertise in plant diseases and horticultural best practices, essential knowledge for ensuring that gardens produce healthy, disease-free crops and providing practical guidance to gardeners.
The research team recognizes that meaningful research on community gardens must emerge from a partnership with the community. Rather than approaching community gardening as outside experts, the team is committed to co-designing research questions and methods with the organizations already embedded in this landscape. “Because you want to ask the questions that ultimately matter, and you can’t do that without being in discussion and partnership with the community,” Iannotti emphasized. “You want to find out what foods they are currently eating? Do they even want a community garden? We can’t, as WashU, parachute in and do our thing if we want to have a sustained impact.”
The team presented their research at the Community Agriculture Conference hosted by Seeds St. Louis that brought together various institutions and community members involved in community gardening. The goal of this presentation was to create space for researchers and practitioners to learn from one another and to shape research direction collaboratively.
Giammar and Ramazanova’s research on their decade-old heavy metal study has recently been published in the Environmental Geochemistry and Health journal1, making their findings publicly accessible to the broader research community. Simultaneously, the team is conducting a literature review to synthesize current knowledge about community garden health benefits and environmental risks. The team is also outlining a proposal for external funding, identifying knowledge gaps that their collaborative expertise is uniquely positioned to address. This work will position them to pursue larger, more comprehensive studies on the health benefits of community gardens, positioning WashU as an institution with expertise in community garden research.