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.
