Hello! I work for the NYC Dept of Health and Mental Hygiene on the climate health and air quality teams, and my team is working on a project with an academic researcher about public perceptions relating to air quality. The initial idea for the project started because at community events we often hear concerns about air quality and asthma/other health effects people link to poor outdoor air quality. Our team struggles with balancing these frustrations about air pollution related health inequity alongside our outdoor air monitoring data because the parts of the city with the worst air quality do not have the worst health outcomes.
Sometimes this tension can feel like a binary where if we lean too heavily on the air quality monitoring data, that is in contradiction with people’s lived experiences and the clear health inequity, but if we lean too heavily on community concerns about air pollution, we are not keeping our air quality recommendations grounded in what’s environmentally happening. Our team has talked about wanting to apply some of the data equity concepts more strongly into the work and are trying to figure out the best possible framing for this exploration.
The research project has collected online survey data as well as conducted interviews with a handful of people who completed the survey. Our research partner is currently looking over the interviews, but in the future is hoping to conduct a larger scale project on this. So, there are opportunities to center data equity in the writing/analysis of the current data collection and in framing the project going forward.
Thanks for sharing your work here. I’m really curious about the situation and am so glad your team is thinking through the balance of AQ monitoring data and people’s lived experiences.
I’m wondering what you are asking in the surveys and interviews and if that could shed more light on what specifically is contributing to people’s experiences and concerns. That might be more meaningful in steering what recommendations you’re able to give.
I’m also wondering if there are parallel conversations occurring related to indoor air quality as that is such a large contributor to health outcomes, and perhaps something that people are contributing to outdoor air quality when that’s not the case.
Overall, I think as practitioners we need to trust what people tell us and try to ask more questions to understand the situation (of course much easier said than done). I’d love to hear how you proceed and what others would recommend as well.
My first thought is that health outcomes may not need to be the only indicator you’re going off of. I’m not a public health expert so pardon my questions and any assumptions, but I’d assume that healthcare outcomes are better in higher income areas, but these areas are still afflicted with air quality concerns and health impacts, but perhaps they have better ACCESS to care, so outcomes are better, and they’re also able to mitigate exposure to poor air quality (HEPA filters, homeowners vs landlords who never change filters, living in buildings with good ventilation vs without).
I wonder if you look at other indicators of air quality and health, you may find some data that helps feel these folks included and have their lived experiences reflected in the data you’re reporting.
I’m interested to see what you come up with! It’s always tricky to try to manage real concerns people have and more “concrete” data markers like AQ when there are so many variables that effect how they perceive their air quality and environmental inequities. I’d also hazard a guess that folks most impacted by environmental inequity are dealing with so many other things that they don’t have time to be involved in public health initiatives! Tricky!
Thank you for your previous responses @adellemcd and @EmberM to our questions. We have some findings from our survey that we’d like to think through how to present to the community is a way that provides the opportunity to correct misperceptions while not alienating the listeners:
Over 40% of people surveyed disagreed with the statement that air quality in their neighborhood is better today than 5 or 10 years ago. Data collected by NYC, NY State and researchers show that air quality has improved (we’d show some data) -side note, people who believe that air quality is worse today also have the lowest trust in the government based on our survey findings.
Neighborhoods with better perceived air quality have higher measured pollution levels
People living in neighborhoods with higher Asthma emergency department rates perceive that their air quality is unhealthy even though measured pollution levels are lower than other parts of NYC.