Engaging community on mobile environmental applications, air pollution policy impacts, and dissemination of Center findings

Project Summary The Community Outreach and Translation Core (COTC), working with CCCEH investigators, our community partner We Act for Environmental Justice (WE ACT), and our Community Advisory and Stakeholder Board (CASB), will undertake three projects to fulfill our two primary goals to: (1) translate and disseminate research findings on the health impacts of air pollution from the Center to community residents, policy-makers, health care professionals and the general public; and (2) assess the impact of policy change in New York City on air quality and health outcomes citywide and in the cohort. Our aim 1 is to assess community residents? preferences for environmental health information, their current use of mobile applications to obtain it, and to identify and promote the use of mobile applications that meet community preferences and needs. We will use focus groups and surveys to gather information and to evaluate whether a workshop promoting use of mobile applications in our cohort increases their use and changes behavior. Our aim 2 is to characterize New York City policies to reduce air pollution from 1998 to 2013 by start date, duration, degree of implementation, and area of expected geographic impact to provide an educational resource for community groups to use in engaging government in seeking cleaner air. We will illustrate use of this resource by measuring the impact of policies to reduce city bus emissions on birth outcomes and respiratory hospitalizations in children living on bus routes, compared to those who do not, using ZIP+4 digit residence coding. We predict that there will be initial differences that will decrease over time due to reduced bus emissions. Our aim 3 is to develop new strategies, in collaboration with our CASB, for translating the Center?s findings to key target populations using a variety of communications methods. We will hold annual Stakeholder Briefings to present the Center?s research on the health effects of PAH in air pollution. We will continue our Healthy Home, Healthy Child campaign by working with CASB to incorporate mobile technology in our outreach and will begin to work with adolescents to increase their awareness of environmental health and introduce them to tools that can help them adopt preventive behaviors. Finally we will continue to work with the Mailman School of Public Health's Office of External Affairs to disseminate key research findings to local and national media through press releases and other communication.