Project

University Of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison WI

Investigators

Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY - PROJECT Urgent actions to address climate change are clearly needed, as climate threats to human health are extensive, formidable, and growing. Policies to reduce energy emissions are geared to mitigate climate change by reducing greenhouse gas (GH) emissions. While these strategies can also deliver health “co-benefits,” especially from improving air quality, health is usually not prioritized, and only considered generally in aggregate, without taking into account localized effects, and with little or no input from the community. The goal of the proposed NIH Health- First Climate Action Research Center is to provide research-based evidence and guidance to maximize health and equity benefits while reducing GHG emissions. The research project of the Center flips the usual analytical frame for climate-health analysis by introducing a community-driven health-equity approach to identify health-focused energy solutions while addressing disparities in air pollution exposures. Working with the Community Engagement Core and Milwaukee-based community partners, the proposed Research Project will develop a comprehensive menu of technology and policy options to support health, clean air, and climate mitigation, and transform these into specific policy scenarios for community review and development. The project will also develop and evaluate a new, high-resolution reduced-form modeling framework, the Scenario Health Risk for Energy (SHRE, pronounced as “share”) model, to support the design and implementation of evidence-based health and climate interventions proposed by and co-developed with community partners. This model will merge best practices to quantify fine particulate matter (PM2.5), sulfur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen oxides (NOx), ozone, and volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Including ambient local pollutant concentrations, this model will be used to evaluate specific health impacts from both short- and long-term exposures, with consideration of environmental justice impacts, for use when developing the community-driven policy scenarios. To support action-oriented solutions, this research project will also quantify the GHG emissions reductions for each of the policy priorities, using full lifecycle assessment methodology. Community-engaged social and equity impact tracing techniques will be used to identify interventions impacting a broader set of equity- relevant metrics (e.g., access, affordability, mobility, etc.). These results will be shared and refined in an iterative process using quantitative and qualitative data from digital crowdsourcing to complement community-based individual and group interviews under guidance from the Center’s Community Advisory Board. We also will utilize tools to share the multidimensional impacts of health-first policies, working with our Data Science Core toward developing effective data visualizations and knowledge sharing protocols to engage with our community partners. This project will thus be able to identify climate change actions with the greatest positive health and equity effects, and is designed for immediate translational impact with the potential to scale to other regions.