Driving Environmental Justice: Community Monitoring of Diesel Truck Emissions and Impacts onAsthma Morbidity in Immigrant Communities - ABSTRACT
Asthma prevalence and morbidity is on the rise for recently migrated and multigenerational immigrant
communities. It is well established that length of stay in the U.S. and acculturation to be associated with
asthma in Latino/x/e communities. Yet, the mechanisms—in particular the environmental contributors— remain
largely unknown. North Richmond, South Fresno, and Southwest Stockton, California are three environmental
justice communities with large immigrant populations. As these immigrant-prominent communities reside near
environmental hazards, including frequented truck routes, there is an imperative to increase our understanding
of the short-term health effects of diesel exhaust pollution for individuals with asthma. In partnership with
community-based organizations from these communities, this proposal seeks to: 1) estimate the short-term
health effects of black carbon exposure on daily rescue medication use and symptom burden; 2) understand
how acculturative stress and discrimination may modify or enhance this association; 3) identify multilevel
protective factors that reduce the health effects of black carbon exposure in asthma; and 4) co-prioritize
protective strategies at the individual, household, and community level.
To accomplish these aims, we will enroll 300 Latine household with at least one residing child, 6–17 years old,
with asthma (100 households/community), use a GPS-enabled cap for inhalers to collect information on time
and place of rescue medication use, and set up a high-density black carbon sensor network and air quality
model to derive an hourly 100-meter black carbon concentration grid. We will then examine for health effects of
black carbon on rescue medication use and symptom burden using distributed lag models, examine for effect
modification by acculturative stress and discrimination markers, and identify multi-level protective factors.
These results will inform a community stakeholder engaged effort using a participatory action research
approach. This will involve working with our established Youth Council in Richmond, CA (to be extended to
Fresno and Stockton) to co-create and distribute a community-wide survey (n=600) and co-lead listening
sessions to iteratively prioritize promising protective strategies for consideration of inclusion in local community
emissions reduction plans.
At the conclusion of the study, we will have a nuanced understanding of the short-term health effects of diesel
exhaust pollution, measured as black carbon for this proposal, on daily asthma morbidity in Latine populations
residing near roadways and other environmental hazards. Furthermore, we will examine how acculturative
stress and discrimination may exacerbate this health disparity. Perhaps most impactful, we will not only identify
promising multi-level protective factors but also co-prioritize these strategies with our community partners.
