Air sensor and team development training for community-academic partnerships
Innovative Education and Tools for Air Quality Monitoring
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.
The application portal for the 2024 program is now closed. The portal will reopen in Winter 2025 for our August 2025 program.
Contact us
Do you have questions about the program? Visit our FAQs page and feel free to contact us any time.
Email
daniel.hargraves@uc.edu
Monthly Webinar Series
Each month, the RISE Communities team will host a live webinar series called “Grand RISE Rounds”. This series will focus on continued education including sensor technology updates and trainings, data management, analysis, and visualization. Program participants are also invited to showcase their findings in their community partnership’s work.
Program Training Modules
RISE Communities created EJSensors.com as a point of access to experts across the disciplinary focuses: CEnR methodology, public health research in EJ communities, and air quality monitoring using sensor technology. Here you will find a moderated discussion board where participants and key stakeholders can post questions and engage in a dialogue with program faculty, outside experts, and other participants. You can also access a training library of on-demand video modules to support participant self-directed learning from our in-person program.
Resources and Materials
Here you will find a collection of resources external to what RISE Communities provides, including links to other organizations who do air sensor research, open access education materials, guides on air sensor deployment, data collection, and analysis, and other materials intended to assist, grow, and provide momentum for teams and projects.
Program and Community Outcomes
RISE Communities is proud to facilitate an online portal to our local training evaluation outcomes in addition to research team findings from participants across the country. See how others are partnering to further their community research in air quality monitoring.
“Our overarching goal is to foster community-engaged research (CEnR) rooted in team science principles.”
— Pat Ryan, PhD, Principal Investigator, RISE Communities
Contact us
Do you have questions about the program? Visit our FAQs page and feel free to contact us any time.
Email
daniel.hargraves@uc.edu