2000: Urban Measurement of Aerosols and Asthma Project (UrbanMAAP)
How can the asthma survey protocols and instruments be refined to improve the quality of asthma data collected for the New York City Metro Area Case Study? Can we remove the socioeconomic and gender bias in the asthma data to quantify the environmental triggers of this human health problem? What are current policy decisions that can benefit from UrbanMAAP and how would this research data and analysis yield more informed decisions?
Research Objectives
Assess the Spring 2000 Asthma Survey and protocols and produce an improved version.
Conduct re-analysis of Spring 2000 Asthma Survey data to quantify asthma incidence in New York City among 10-18 year-olds in terms of gender, seasonality of attacks, and zip code-level variability. Compare the zip code-level variability with that reported in Claudio et al. (1999) and assess the degree to which the county-level Spring 2000 survey results are biased by the spatial (zip code) sampling.
Identify current policy decisions in relation to the UrbanMAAP research dimensions that can potentially produce an added value to the decision-making process.
Tasks and Responsible Researchers
The survey assessment project is carried out in collaboration with Mount Sinai Environmental Research Center. Students (Rashele and Dorothy) will spend 2 days per week at Mount Sinai and 3 days at GISS.
Survey Assessment Project Tasks
Review the survey and assess how well it addresses the research questions: 1) what is the incidence and severity of asthma among 10-18 year-olds in New York City? 2) Is asthma incidence equally distributed throughout the city? 3) Is availability of treatment an significant factor influencing the number of attacks an individual experiences in a year? 4) Are asthma hospitalization rates a biased indicator of asthma? 5) What do people think triggers their asthma? Compile a list of criticisms to address in the revision process.
Interview faculty who administered the asthma survey to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the survey. Revise your list of criticisms to address in the survey revision.
Consult survey literature, professional surveys, and medical evaluators to determine ways to improve the survey. Determine and justify how many people must be surveyed and what zip codes should be included for it to be a useful research tool in the UrbanMAAP New York Case Study.
Write an introductory page for the survey that should be read by all the people administering it to reduce the variability in how it is explained to students. Also, write a new list of protocols for how the survey is administered throughout the city, specifying the geographic areas/zip codes to cover, numbers of students to survey per school, time of year to conduct, procedures to secure school system and building level approvals, steps for conducting the survey in a school and for a teacher to follow who is administering the survey.
Revise the survey instrument and set up a focus group to test it.
Asthma Survey Re-Analysis Project Tasks
Re-enter the asthma survey responses for question numbers 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 17.
Identify "hot" zip codes where asthma incidence is the highest.
Design a methodology to remove gender and socio-economic bias. Analyze the survey data using this methodology to explain any gender bias, socio-economic bias, significance in seasonality of attacks, geographic variability of asthma incidence (at the zip code level). After removing gender and socioeconomic bias, use previous team results (see Christine Fleming and Rashele Cross papers) to attempt to explain the environmental factors that may be triggering asthma.
Develop a concise and clear statement explaining the importance of the UrbanMAAP asthma study to NASA's research program on Human Health and the Environment, including the unique way the team is studying this problem and its potential contribution to this research area.
Applications Research Tasks
Coordinate and plan one meeting with Richard Harris, the Director of the Rutgers Rand Institute, to begin to identify policy applications of UrbanMAAP. Design the session as a two-way exchange, where GISS scientists provide a scientific briefing on the aerosol research and the Dr. Harris provides a complementary talk on his relevant environmental policy research.
Team Products
Revised survey and protocols in a school packet. Documentation justifying your revisions.
A diskette with the summer project Excel Workbook that includes plots, data, notes analyzing results and the statement concerning the contribution of the research project to NASA. This data product will be an important resource for writing a science publication on the team's findings.
An initial draft of a joint statement prepared by GISS and Rutgers concerning the specific policy applications of UrbanMAAP and their connection to the project science objectives.
