The Center also has an active Community Outreach and Education Program (COEP) which interacts with community organizations to understand their environmental health concerns and to share scientific research results, creating collaborative projects on environmental health issues. The COEP also is working to develop models for community outreach and school-based programs to educate the public on how to control, reduce or eliminate the threat of living with environmental hazards.

Dissemination of research findings to the health care, corporate and policy-making communities and to the public at large enables the SCEHSC to facilitate an informed public debate and, ultimately, improved public policies, making the Center and its scientists a regional and national resource on environmental health research.

The mission of the Community Outreach and Education Program of the Center is to increase public understanding of the effects of the environment on human health and ways to reduce harmful exposures, by linking the Center’s research and its team of interdisciplinary scientists with community, school, professional, business and policymaking constituencies, in order to translate research findings into knowledge applied to public health.

The COEP's objectives are to:

• Establish mechanisms to determine community environmental health concerns;
• Foster collaboration and partnerships between Center scientists and diverse community constituencies to ensure that the Center’s research and COEP activities are relevant and address the needs of the community;
• Translate Center research into information that can be used to inform public policy and public health, and disseminate Center scientific findings; and
• Evaluate COEP efforts and make program changes as needed.