A project idea that has been in the works for just shy of a decade was finally made real by the team at JustAir and the Wayne County government. While I worked at the Detroit Health Department I worked on conceptualizing and then managing an effort to create an air quality sensor network that could provide neighborhood-level updates on air quality. The issue was that EPA and EGLE monitors were too few and far in-between to truly know what your air quality was on the Lower Eastside or Far Westside of the city, especially if you were trying to manage asthma or other respiratory diseases.

In Detroit we called it D-REACT, but only implemented an asthma medication monitoring project where the greatest outcome was pediatrician education about asthma medications necessary and covered by Medicaid. We also were able to implement the Air Quality Sensor Learning Collaborative, now convened by the Ecology Center who has been able to train and support numerous community organizations with low-cost, air quality sensors.

I’m so excited for the JustAir efforts and look forward to seeing this network have big impacts in Detroit and across Wayne County.