Project Summary:
Environmental quality is a fundamental determinant of community health. Research has linked poorer environmental quality to adverse health impacts, including asthma and cancer prevalence, increased cardiovascular disease, adverse pregnancy outcomes, and increased mortality. In Milwaukee, neighborhoods with lower income and higher proportions of racialized groups experience significantly poorer environmental quality, and are exposed to more air pollution, contaminated properties, and less green space.
The impacts of existing pollution exposure on public health are exacerbated and compounded by climate change, underscoring the urgent need to understand and address environmental determinants of health and to increase community resilience. In Wisconsin, most compilations of environmental-health burdens are available only at the county or state level. Data at this level is insufficient for a community to understand its most important environmental exposures since they vary from neighborhood to neighborhood within a metro area. Fortunately, higher-resolution information is increasingly available, enabling neighborhood-level assessments of environmental health exposures.
Because existing tools are largely beyond the reach of most communities, there is an urgent need to combine and package this information into useful, compelling, and accessible formats so that communities can address and reduce their most important exposures. To fill this gap, Clean Wisconsin will build upon its 11-year history of partnering with neighborhood groups in Milwaukee’s north side to create community-informed almanacs of environmental pollution and climate-change exposure. These almanacs will complement existing neighborhood profiles of social and economic determinants of health and provide summaries of a variety of environmental-exposure and health-burden metrics, including both absolute and comparative metrics.
Community Partners: Clean Wisconsin, University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute, Century City Triangle Neighborhood Association