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Partnerships for Environmental Public Health (PEPH)

November 15, 2024 • 3:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m. ET

Air monitor

This session will focused on overcoming obstacles associated with air monitoring networks and community engagement.

The first presentation was from several members of the San Joaquin Valley Center for Air Injustice Reduction (SJV-CAIR). The SJV-CAIR is a community- university partnership formed across several counties in California’s San Joaquin Valley (SJV) and the University of California, Merced. This partnership includes community members, citizen scientists, educators, researchers, and academics working to address air pollution in the SJV, which is one of the worst air quality basins in the United States for fine particulate matter (PM 2.5). Together, they have helped build on networks of low-cost air quality monitors (such as Purple Air, PA-II) to provide better spatial coverage and understanding of air pollution in this region. Through this collaboration, citizen-science air monitors have been installed in homes, businesses, clinics, fire stations, and schools in several SJV counties. This new information empowers community members, citizen scientists, researchers, academics, and governmental bodies to access real-time actionable PM 2.5 data from their respective locations. This network and partnership aim to help identify local and regional air quality trends, inform SJV residents of the local air quality they experience, support public health education and real-time outreach to mitigate air pollution exposure and protect public health.

The second presentation was given by Jose Luis Olmedo Velez, Executive Director of Comite Civico del Valle (CCV) based in Brawley, California. “Informed people build healthy communities”, CVV was founded on this principle and continues to incorporate this mission statement in all partnerships, research studies, and civic engagements initiated or comprised by our organization. CCV’s extensive background and accomplishments date back to our grassroots origins in 1987. In over three decades of serving the communities of Imperial Valley, CCV now serves various California communities through collaborative efforts with other established Environmental Justice organizations and in partnership with researchers, academia, and government agencies.

Presentation

Experts

Presentation One: The San Joaquin Valley Center for Air Injustice Reduction (SJV-CAIR): A Community Based Low-cost Air Quality Monitoring Network

Asa Bradman, Ph.D.

Asa Bradman, Ph.D., is an expert in exposure assessment and epidemiology focusing on occupational and environmental exposures to pregnant women, children, and farmworkers living in agricultural communities. In 1998 he co-founded the Center for Environmental Research and Children's Health (CERCH) at UC Berkeley and in 2020 Bradman joined the faculty at UC Merced. Bradman leads exposure and epidemiologic studies examining pesticides, flame retardants, metals, emerging pollutants, VOCs, air quality and other contaminants. He participates in extensive community outreach and education and interfaces with other scientists, state and federal agencies, policy makers and industry. He is past member and Chair of the California Biomonitoring Scientific Guidance Panel (appointed by Governors Schwarzennegger in 2007, Brown in 2013), and in 2017 he was appointed to a five-year term on the USDA National Organic Standards Board. Early in his career, Bradman harvested grapefruits and apples for export, worked on a chicken farm, and was the produce manager for a small grocery store.

Tim Tyner

Tim Tyner is the Founder and Co-Executive Director of Central California Asthma Collaborative. Tyner has overseen the implementation of multiple environmental equity programs recognized for supporting disadvantaged communities across the San Joaquin Valley and is leading CCAC’s emerging environmental health research program, which is currently collaborating with investigators from UC Merced, UC Berkeley, UC San Francisco, UCLA, UC Irvine, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and Berkeley Air. Tim co-founded CCAC in 2011 and served as CEO from 2011-2013. He also served as Board Chairman from 2011-2016 and 2021-present. Tim formally joined the CCAC staff in 2018 as Co-Executive Director and has secured more than two dozen grants totaling more than $6M.

Betsey Noth, Ph.D.

Betsey Noth, Ph.D., is the Director of the Industrial Hygiene program in the Northern California NIOSH Education and Research Center at the Northern California Center of Occupational and Environmental Health. She provides leadership in mentoring, teaching and research opportunities to student trainees in their program. She has over 20 years of experience as an exposure assessment scientist in air pollution exposure assessment for both occupational and environmental research studies which prepared her to provide scientific and professional mentorship. Her own research as an environmental health sciences associate researcher at the University of California, Berkeley has focused on air pollution exposures that are either extremely high (e.g., polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon exposures to wildland firefighters and communities during wildfires) or impact vulnerable populations (e.g., children and pregnant women).

Estrella Herrera-Molina, Ph.D.

Estrella Herrera-Molina, Ph.D., is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Merced. She received a Ph.D. in Environmental Science and Engineering from the University of Texas at El Paso. Her research examines the associations between exposure to air pollution after a dust event and hospitalizations over the Chihuahuan desert and Southern Plains of Texas and how Disparities in health and its determinants may induce intrinsic vulnerability to the effects of air pollution. Her postdoctoral research examines San Joaquin Valley particulate matter air pollution and its health effects. Her previous work involved conceptualizing a predictive model for analysis of the health outcomes of dust events, air pollution control, biological aerosol particles in dust, water management, botanical research, characterization of climate zones, environmental compliance, and Environmental Management Systems.

Leticia M. Classen-Rodriguez, Ph.D.

Leticia M. Classen-Rodriguez, Ph.D., is the Participatory Science Program Director and Environmental Science Lead at SocioEnvironmental and Education Network (SEEN), 4 Venir, Inc. They are a lead author on the California’s Climate Change Assessment for the San Joaquin Valley Region and a coauthor of the novel land repurposing study “Water, environment, and socioeconomic justice in California: A multi-benefit cropland repurposing framework“, among many other relevant works.

Nathan Werth

Nathan Werth serves as the Chief of Staff for Little Manila Rising, a community-based organization serving the South Stockton community in California. He has worked within the nonprofit sector for 23 years in Stockton by providing strategic planning, grant writing, and sustainability planning to various social justice organizations.

Elaine Labson

Elaine Labson serves as the Deputy Director for Little Manila Rising (LMR), overseeing their health programs and helping directors strategize with teams on their vision for short and long-term outcomes for their programs. In her work, she handles and moves projects forward that are related to health while building out LMR’s school to social justice framework.

Presentation Two: Lessons Learned from Comite Civico del Valle

Jose Luis Olmedo Velez

Luis Olmedo, is the Executive Director of Comite Civico del Valle based in Brawley, California. Olmedo is a community advocate who advises on local, regional, and state environmental health programs and is a member of various state and national networks that focus on environmental policy, civic leadership, and environmental justice. Olmedo has served as Executive Director for nearly two decades where he has led a team of local visionaries in development of evidence-based health interventions, sensor measurement engineering, programming, and crowdsourcing, designing new government frameworks and service programs, and crafting new multi-media collaborative models all with a goal of leveling the playing field for disadvantaged communities. Olmedo values the power that comes from collaboration and is evident in his partnership with diverse expertise including academia, government, community-based organizations, business, youth, healthcare, and community.

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