Air sensor and team development training for community-academic partnerships

A Recognized Need

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) defines environmental justice as “the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income, with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.” The lived experience of many residents in communities in need of environmental justice (EJ), referred to as EJ communities, includes disproportionately higher rates of adverse health outcomes, often as a result of environmental and social stressors. Low-cost air sensors offer tremendous opportunities for researchers and community members to better understand air pollution exposures at neighborhood, indoor, and personal levels. Though these devices are often marketed as easy-to-use, users face multiple technical challenges including maintenance, calibration, data management, and data visualization.

Additionally, community members and researchers may form community-academic partnerships within a community-engaged research (CEnR) framework. However, successful community-academic partnerships require time and training to set expectations, identify team member roles, develop team processes and shared mental models, and design a project that balances the needs of a community with the expectations of academic researchers.

One Potential Solution

Research Innovations using Sensor Technology in Environmental Justice Communities (RISE Communities) is an innovative program to foster successful community-academic partnerships and equip research teams with the technical skills and knowledge to successfully utilize low-cost sensors in EJ communities. The RISE Communities program is designed to build a network of community-engaged environmental health researchers highly trained in employing low-cost sensor technology to measure air quality in EJ communities. The program is funded by a National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences Grant and is a partnership between the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center Division of Biostatistics and Epidemiology and the University of Cincinnati Department of Family and Community Medicine.

Our long-term goal is to empower communities to pursue change through academic partnerships and data, improving the health of individuals and populations. In addition to all-expenses paid in-person training for participants, the program also provides FREE PurpleAir PA-IISD Air Quality Monitors to establish low-cost monitoring networks in their communities.

Applications to the Summer 2024 program are now open and are due May 1, 2024. The program will occur Wednesday, August 7- Friday, August 9, 2024 in Cincinnati, Ohio.