BRIAN BEVERIDGE Co-Director Healthy People, Global Goods Movement Conference “Empowering Residents with CBPR”

Community-based, resident led environmental justice education and advocacy group Began as a project of the Pacific Institute, an internationally known “think tank” on issues of water rights and community sustainability. “Neighborhood Knowledge for Change” “Clearing the Air” “Paying with Our Health”

22,000 residents 40% African- American 25% Latino 5% Asian/Other 30% Pale

Not really the murder capital of the nation.

West Oakland has a trucking industry in residence and a national seaport as a neighbor. IMPACTS? Toxic Air Damaged Infrastructure Traffic and Pedestrian Risk Blight and Storm water Problems

HEALTH IMPACTS 5-7 times state average for asthma hospitalization in children under 5 99 times state medians for “black carbon” particulate in homes of seniors living along commercial streets and truck routes. State Health Risk Assessment says 1200 – 1600 lifetime cancers per million due to diesel emissions.

What do we do about it in an over-worked, under paid, politically marginalized community? Our Community Leadership Academy teaches residents how to advocate for positive change. Using Pop Ed techniques, we “start from where people are.” We use Community-Based Participatory Research as a tool to employ and educate residents about issues they think are important.

CBPR DEMOCRATIZATION OF RESEARCH Residents are given the opportunity to influence research about their own community Subject matter Methodology Field activities Results analysis

TRUCK TRAFFIC STUDY WITH BAAQMD

DEMONCRATIZATION OF DATA The INTEL-UCB-WOEIP Partnership We’re not just complaining any more, now we have charts and graphs!

OUR QUESTION: What are we breathing on the street? OUR PROBLEM: All the data is from 70 feet up over by the waste treatment plant. (Within regional medians.) OUR SUSPICION: We don’t all breath the same air. SOLUTION: Collect lots of data down where we breath.

AIR DISTRICTS PROBLEM: That’s really hard to do to our standards of accuracy and quality control for peer review by multiple other agencies and for a lot of other scientific reasons that you really wouldn’t understand, but in the spirit of good community relations were willing to send an engineer to your next community meeting to show you an hour long PowerPoint presentation with charts and graphs that explain why we cant’ do it. OUR NEW PROBLEM: Intense frustration.

DustTrak Particulate Matter Sensor BEGGINNING SOLUTIONS

RESULTS Lots of data – don’t know what it means yet. New knowledge, capacity and awareness among participants. “Good preparation. People (in the neighborhood) did ask (about what we were doing). It helped to have and understanding of what we were doing.” “Informative. I learned about pollution from freeways. I learned more about what is in diesel pollution and particulate matter.”

“Some of my boys live here. When they saw it was me with the bag, they were cool.” (Surveyors know some residents.) “Once they know we’re not police they pay less attention to us.” It is important work; felt good about doing it. Easy work, informative, good exercise. Good to be outdoors; enjoyed the work. “Real cool.” Learned a lot; liked the work; important to do this study. Feel like it’s “helping to do some good.” “I didn’t feel so homeless anymore.”

What is the real value of CBPR to residents? The surveyors learned: What PM is, what sizes are what things, and how it affects the body. Sometimes data has to be gathered in the rain. Documentation takes discipline for accuracy. How GPS systems work and why it’s sometimes hard to get a signal lock. There are jobs available in science without having a college degree. Some new things to talk to their neighbors about. They started thinking about why the PM levels might be higher on one street then they are a few blocks away. They started to think about how all this affects how they feel, what they do, where they live, and how they might change the future.

Common Sense Mobile Air Quality Monitor WHAT’S NEXT? Broad scale, passive, ground-level monitoring with instantaneous web-based data distribution

Common Sense Mobile Air Quality Monitor

REGULATOR: “Oh, NO! Now the phones will really be ringing!” Or just maybe people will use the new access to information to make better choices about where they live, what they eat and how they vote. IT COULD HAPPEN

Information is power THANK YOU