Update on Project Activities
As we continue to work on different educational materials to help inform community stakeholders about Brightline’s air monitoring program and about air quality science itself, our team has been taking the steps to better educate ourselves on these topics and better understand how we can translate them into more digestible content. Informational Interviews A large piece of this process has been conducting informational interviews with different professors across many different departments at Stanford. Patricia had a meeting with Professor David Gonzalez of the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources, and learned about his research on the detrimental effects air pollution had on birth rates for women in Southern California. Our conversation focused on what data to look at, as well as how to communicate findings in an accessible way. Professor Gonzalez also kindly offered to write some of the code for the data analysis. In addition, Dani conducted an interview with Professor Lynn Hildemann of the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department. Given her background in researching air quality science and its impact on urban communities, Lynn provided a helpful overview of the most important takeaways of air quality science for the everyday person. Lynn also has experience serving on advisory committees for the Bay Area Air Quality Management District and for the California Air Resources Board, so she gave us some tips about how to use the air quality data to better advocate for policy reforms like car-free streets or clean buses, for example. Maya met with Professor Marshall Burke in the Department of Earth System Science to discuss his research on the hidden health costs of wildfire. He provided insightful context on the effects of air pollution on cardiovascular and respiratory health, as well as things we don’t often think about, like test scores and mental health. He was very interested in how the data resulting from this project will be used and how future study could address indoor air quality; Maya is going to connect him to Eddie and Daniela via email for potential future collaboration. Looking ahead, Tori has been working to set up an interview with a professor about air quality and was able to secure a potential interview with Lisa Patel at the Sean N. Parker Center for Allergy and Asthma Research. Introduction Booklet Maya is pre-writing the booklet, pulling preliminary information before she begins working on a final draft with the actual language. Clarity’s Chief Operating Officer Meiling Gao made an incredibly informative presentation to the Sustainable Cities class that Maya is drawing on for the “Basics of Air Quality” section. In addition, Maya (along with Tori, Patricia, and Dani) was able to meet with CCSROC leader Pratibha Tekkey on Friday morning, and she provided useful context on the needs of the SRO tenants; many of them speak Spanish, Arabic, and Cantonese as a first language, and have limited reading and writing capabilities in English. As a result, the language of the booklet will be most useful if it is short and to the point, with lots of visuals. This is useful knowledge for our team as we move forward; Pratibha is also willing to connect us with tenant leaders so they can provide feedback before we finalize the deliverable. Data Template Connery has been continuing to look through and record data from the Clarity air quality system, putting together a spreadsheet to replicate the overlaid graphs on the website. So far, the clearest distinctions have been peaks in AQI at the morning and evening in each day regardless of location, and that the areas tend to have relatively similar AQI levels as well, though Chinatown’s tend to be slightly more drastic in range, and the Richmond District’s sensor has the highest peaks on average. Flyer / Social Media Tori and Dani have been continuing with the flyers that will be put up all around SoMa and the Tenderloin, and they’ve been working with Eddie and Daniela to apply edits to the flyer’s first drafts. Tori has also been in communication with the Brightline leads and the CCSROC lead Pratibha through email and a meeting in which we received feedback on our work so far so that we can make adjustments for the final product. Moving forward, we may work with Pratibha to schedule direct meetings with SRO tenant leaders to hear their thoughts on what information may be most important or most relevant for the tenants in their buildings. Pitching to local news outlets Patricia met with Eddie and Daniela to discuss story angles to pitch to local news outlets. This week, she is pitching to the Stanford Daily about story featuring the Sustainable Cities class, and to the San Francisco Chronicle about the inaccessibility of "low-cost" air filters such as Purple Air, and what Brightline is trying to do to address that inequity. What We Observed and Learned From these latest project activities, Tori has learned the value of collaboration. By working with other members within our team as well as collaborating with the Brightline team to receive feedback on our work so far we have been able to produce better and better work. Additionally, the in-class presentation from Clarity and Brightline this week allowed her to get further insight into the science behind air quality and the aims of this monitoring work which will allow her to be better informed and more effective as a Brightline team member. Dani found the meeting with Pratibha particularly eye-opening, as talking with Pratibha about the real-word logistics — how the flyers would be distributed, where they would be posted, and who would be reading them — made her reflect more on how these details should influence the design of these materials. She has found it to be an interesting cycle, a back-and-forth of drafts and feedback, as it is a balance of offering her skills and creating new designs and templates to show the SRO tenant leaders, but at the same time, not creating too much without first hearing the SRO tenant leaders’ input. For instance, Tori and Dani had come up with different drafts of a flyer that included a small paragraph of educational information about AQI science. However, Pratibha noted that many of the people actually reading the flyers may not speak English or may feel as though such a poster looks too much like an advertisement. Thus, we discussed ways to make the language on the flyers — something that initially seemed relatively straightforward — more friendly and local to the neighborhood so as to make them appear more personalized and more helpful to the community. For example, instead of a flyer that reads “Have you seen one of these?” with an image of a Clarity sensor on it, Pratibha suggested re-wording it to “Have you seen me in the TL?” Maya also found Prabitha’s insight provided critical framing for how to make the introduction booklet similarly accessible and relevant. In her conversation with Professor Gonzalez, Patricia learned the importance of reviewing literature of work that has already been done when it comes to studying air quality and the impact it has on marginalized communities. She found it very valuable to learn about Professor Gonzalez's research methods and how he is able to find patterns in his data. Critical Analysis/Moving Forward Hearing from members of Brightline, Clarity, EJ Solutions, and Oakland Climate Action Coalition, really strengthened our group’s understanding of the larger context of our work. Brightline and Clarity allowed us to see the science behind air quality monitoring and the impact that this work hopes to have on communities. The knowledge that we gained from this presentation, alongside our continuous learning as we work with Brightline will help to not only further educate us so that we can share our knowledge of air quality with the community in simple digestible formats, but it also inspires us to be impactful leaders in the way that these organizers are. Clarity's presentation will be very helpful as we create informational material for Brightline. Furthermore, Wednesday’s presenters allowed us to frame our work in the context of environmental justice as a whole, and see how other organizations are working to improve the environmental conditions of marginalized communities. This will help us to have a better understanding of the wider impacts of EJ work and how we can incorporate different organizations’ strategies and perspectives into our work. Tori really enjoyed being able to hear from these organizations this week and learn from the leadership and action they are taking in these communities. She hopes that she will be able to apply some of their expertise and problem solving skills as we continue our work with Brightline so that she can better understand and engage with these communities. Comments are closed.
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