The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA

Abstract #49300

John Fleming and Cecilia Iglesias Garden. El Puente, 211 South Fourth Street, Brooklyn, NY 11211, 718-302-6443, JohnF1011@aol.com

The Williamsburg Brooklyn Asthma and Environment Consortium in partnership with El Puente - a community organization in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Woodhull Medical and Mental Health Center, and NYU School of Medicine, Department of Environmental Medicine, is conducting community-based environmental health research on asthma in Williamsburg's predominantly Latino "Southside" neighborhood. The Consortium seeks to bring together several approaches currently used to understand the connections between asthma and the environment: occupational health and workplace environment, outdoor air pollution monitoring, and indoor household environmental assessments in Latino/a communities. While there are many research projects to focus on one or another type of exposure, this project seeks to document multiple exposures of residents in an industrial low-income community. The paper will discuss the Consortium's efforts in developing a family health promotion model in which organized residents have access to easily understood, scientifically accurate, community-specific information about their health, their environment, and the relationship between the two, enabling them to take targeted action to reduce the impact of environmental factors on their asthma. Additionally, the Consortium uses a community-organizing model, focusing on capacity building of community residents through asthma self-help groups to conduct their own research. The partners guide the research and provide expertise in designing and implementing interventions to improve environmental conditions.

Learning Objectives: Objectives

1.Expose participants to the process of building community and research partners for improved environmental health.
• Discuss and evaluate the success of such partnership models.
• Identify future course of action.

Keywords: Environmental Justice, Asthma

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.