Over the last year, I embarked on the greatest adventure of my graduate career, conducting my dissertation research and initiating my experiences with advancing equity and connecting communities in the Salt Lake County region. My dissertation research (Phase 1) assessed sociospatial inequalities in the distribution of the non-governmental air quality monitoring network (NAQMN) in Salt Lake County; and (Phase 2) used those results to select local environmental justice (EJ) communities of concern with sparse network coverage to examine how participatory air quality sensing shaped participants’ exposure experiences. To accomplish this research, I utilized an exposure experience framework focused on the nexus between embodied health experiences, citizen exposure science (which informs understandings about personal pollutant exposures), and decision-making regarding the management of risks. My overall goal was to clarify the EJ and exposure experience implications of our NAQMN through a mixed method study in Salt Lake County.

Through Phase 1 (i.e., quantitative portion) of my dissertation research, I examined the social and geographic distribution of air quality sensors (e.g., PurpleAir, Tetrad, and Air Quality & U) in Salt Lake County’s NAQMN from an EJ perspective. Due to growth in NAQMN’s and the self-organizing nature of the networks, an uneven spatial distribution of sensors is often produced, as was the case in Salt Lake County. I identified Salt Lake County census tracts with increased proportions of people of color, lower income folks, worse air pollution exposure on average, and decreased air quality sensor distribution; these census tracts were most prevalent in the Northwest quadrant of Salt Lake County.

Through Phase 2 (i.e., the qualitative portion) of my dissertation research, I purchased PurpleAir indoor and outdoor air quality sensors to expand the local NAQMN and recruited 27 households with children with asthma to distribute the sensors to (12/27 households living in census tracts in need of sensors and 3 more nearby). All of the participants (one parent from each household) engaged in a one-hour pre-study interview, 16 weeks survey completion (one 10-minute survey each week), and a one-hour post- study interview to communicate their ongoing experiences with health, air pollution exposure, and air quality sensing during the study timeframe (December 2021 to March 2022). I look forward to examining their perceptions and decision-making through the lens of the exposure experience framework when I analyze these data and write my dissertation papers this summer and fall.

I have thoroughly enjoyed the community engagement side of my work as well. During the 2021-2022 academic year (AC), I collaborated with undergraduate students in Dr. Adrienne Cachelin’s EJ course of Environmental and Sustainability Studies (ENVST) as well as sixth grade students in two Salt Lake City schools to conduct educational outreach about air pollution and to construct air quality sensors with Lego building blocks and with guidance from Drs. Tony Butterfield and Kerry Kelly of Chemical Engineering (Chem Eng). Further, during Fall 2022, through the EJ SPARC (Student Pathways, Action Research, and Critical Engagement) Lab (directed by Dr. Cachelin), undergraduate students, Lauren (Piper) Christian of ENVST and Dylan Rosenberg of Chem Eng (along with my oversight and support), will enhance our community engagement in collaboration with the Glendale Public Library. We will work with EJ students to install an indoor and outdoor air quality sensor at the Glendale Library (further contributing to the expansion of the NAQMN in a census tract area in need of a sensor), host a workshop on DIY (Do-It-Yourself) low-cost portable air purifiers at Glendale’s Clean Air Festival event, and build and explore the impacts of a Clean Air Room in the Glendale Library that will reduce particulate matter in the space by 99% and provide shelter during worse air quality conditions (e.g., winter inversions and summer wildfire smoke events).

It is important to note that I could not have accomplished my dissertation work without the invaluable support of many sources including: undergraduate research assistants, Jose Carreon and Bianca Paulino (Health, Air Pollution and Population Initiative in Education and Science Training aka HAPPIEST Program Summer 2021), and Maria (Manuela) Herrera, Lauren (Piper) Christian, Jessica Cuello, and Angel Valenzuela (2021-2022 AC); graduate student research colleagues from the Center for Natural and Technological Hazards (directed by Drs. Sara Grineski and Timothy Collins); community engaged learning mentors Drs. Adrienne Cachelin and Leah Joyner of ENVST, and Drs. Tony Butterfield and Kerry Kelly of Chem Eng; dissertation committee members, Drs. Sara Grineski, Brett Clark and Lazarus Adua of Sociology, Dr. Timothy Collins of Geography, and Dr. Kerry Kelly of Chem Eng; community partners from Salt Lake City and County school districts and public libraries, and the Utah Department of Health; and funding from the University of Utah’s Sustainable Campus Initiative Fund (SCIF) and the National Science Foundation. Most of all, I am thankful for the continued support of my advisor and mentor, Dr. Grineski, who has played a vital role in guiding my dissertation research.

With all of this, I am honored to be a recipient of this Spring 2022 College of Social and Behavioral Science’s Advancing Equity and Connecting Communities Award. It should be evident that my work was done in collaboration with many undergraduate students, inter-disciplinary faculty, and local community-partners. I hope that wherever this path leads me, I may continue to collaborate with inspiring groups of people on efforts to advance equity and connect communities.