Public Health – Page 7 – UROP Spring Symposium 2021

Public Health

Air quality monitoring on Roads in Detroit, and the Influence of Nearby Vehicles

A study was initiated to investigate the impact of varying levels of traffic in front of a moving vehicle on the levels of air pollution particles detected by the vehicle’s sensors. Over 20,000 images were collected by a front-facing camera on the vehicle. Vehicles within ~50 meters of moving vehicle were then counted and sorted into the categories of heavy duty truck (HDT), commercial vehicle (CV), and personal vehicle (PV); also, noting heavy duty trucks in the adjacent lane and within 20 meters of the moving vehicle. Although the experiment is incomplete, it is expected that the presence of heavy duty trucks within 20 meters of the data collection vehicle will result in raised levels of air pollution particles. The presence of heavy traffic in front of a moving vehicle increases the amount of air pollution particles measured by the vehicle.

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Better Air Quality Outcomes in Southwest Detroit

Southwest Detroit Environmental Vision (SDEV) works to fulfill the needs of the community by empowering its residents to engage and by providing a connection to important resources. SDEV works with industrial corporations, businesses, and residents to address environmental pressures and concerns, specifically air pollution. Residents of Southwest Detroit live in the middle of industry and are exposed to bad air quality that leads to asthma, lead poisoning, strokes, heart attacks, and more. Even more significantly, these high impact areas correlate to more COVID fatalities as a result of these pre-existing conditions. SDEV recognizes that these high impact areas are primarily urban areas of color and that environmental and racial justice go hand in hand. To combat this issue, SDEV is working to propose a revised truck route to reduce truck traffic on residential streets and to increase enforcement of Detroit’s Anti-Idling Ordinance. SDEV has compiled a list of community members willing to host cameras and air-quality monitors at their residences collecting data relating to pollution levels. This data will be used in the proposal to revise the truck routes in order to better protect the health and wellbeing of the community. SDEV also fosters civic engagement and advocates for environmental policy. This is done by organizing residents to talk to their representatives who vote on the policies that affect them. Through these efforts, SDEV is able to engage the community and make deep and impactful changes that lessen environmental pressures. SDEV works to ensure that the residents come first and their concerns are being heard and met.

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Better Air Quality Outcomes in Southwest Detroit

Southwest Detroit Environmental Vision (SDEV) works to fulfill the needs of the community by empowering its residents to engage and by providing a connection to important resources. SDEV works with industrial corporations, businesses, and residents to address environmental pressures and concerns, specifically air pollution. Residents of Southwest Detroit live in the middle of industry and are exposed to bad air quality that leads to asthma, lead poisoning, strokes, heart attacks, and more. Even more significantly, these high impact areas correlate to more COVID fatalities as a result of these pre-existing conditions. SDEV recognizes that these high impact areas are primarily urban areas of color and that environmental and racial justice go hand in hand. To combat this issue, SDEV is working to propose a revised truck route to reduce truck traffic on residential streets and to increase enforcement of Detroit’s Anti-Idling Ordinance. SDEV has compiled a list of community members willing to host cameras and air-quality monitors at their residences collecting data relating to pollution levels. This data will be used in the proposal to revise the truck routes in order to better protect the health and wellbeing of the community. SDEV also fosters civic engagement and advocates for environmental policy. This is done by organizing residents to talk to their representatives who vote on the policies that affect them. Through these efforts, SDEV is able to engage the community and make deep and impactful changes that lessen environmental pressures. SDEV works to ensure that the residents come first and their concerns are being heard and met.

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A Deeper Look into the World of Addiction

The United Community Addiction Network (UCAN) empowers those in the community of Genesee County, Michigan struggling with substance use disorders and addiction. UCAN networks with hospitals, law enforcement, the judicial system, schools, and other systems to evolve how people are treated and how professionals treat co-occurring disorders. They combine the community and clinical aspects of treatment to empower people and to help them find sobriety and reach their potential. Less than 10% of people in need of treatment are being treated for co-occurring disorders alongside their substance use disorder, which causes too many people to relapse and to lack the treatment and resources they need. UCAN is creating an interdisciplinary model for treatment across the world that gives people the resources they need and makes the recovery process easier and more manageable. Through this research project and the current work of UCAN, by analyzing data, we are able to identify gaps in multiple systems and create a cohesive program that addresses every aspect of substance abuse and provides every resource to those who need it.

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A Deeper Look into the World of Addiction

The United Community Addiction Network or UCAN is a community organization based in Genesee County, Michigan that is working to evolve the way addiction is addressed and treated. The project “A Deeper Look into the World of Addiction” sought to aid the planning, development, and implementation of a new treatment program combining community and clinical services for a pathway to recovery. The focus of the new program is to use evidence based practices in order to treat co-occurring substance use and mental health disorders more effectively. Some evidence based practices include consumer-driven treatment, family and community involvement, and having cross-trained specialists. Alongside the development of a new addiction treatment program, UCAN’s other initiatives work to instill lasting change by including medical examiners, emergency responders, local law enforcement, and a new K-9 unit that aims to identify substances for a drug-free environment. In a coordinated effort with community members, UCAN aims to see the implementation of a co-occuring disorder facility as well as other initiatives to be replicated across the state, country, and around the world.

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HOPE Village Storytelling

HOPE Village Revitalization (HVR) is a non-profit community-development corporation with a long history of success serving the HOPE Village neighborhood in Detroit. Using a community-driven approach to mitigate disparities in wealth, privilege and educational opportunities within the neighborhood, HVR is dedicated to being part of the collective working toward equitable and sustainable development in Detroit and to being known as a model of excellence, integrity, and community decision making. This past year, I worked closely with my mentor to develop informational material highlighting the La Salle Eco-Demonstration Home, the organization’s LEED-certified sustainable-living model based on the philosophy that energy efficiency, renewable energy, and sustainable living should be available to everyone regardless of income. Toward this end, I created both written and visual resources that describe and explain various features and sustainable, forward-thinking innovations of the home, as well as covering sustainable goals of the organization achieved with the rehabilitation of the house. By doing research on various eco-friendly efforts currently in progress in Detroit as well as other parts of the world, and particularly seeing the development and work done within the HOPE Village community, I was greatly informed and inspired by the work that is being done in the area of sustainability. I am grateful to my mentor and HOPE Village for this amazing opportunity to be part of the collective effort toward their mission and to experience firsthand the inner-workings of a nonprofit organization.

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Using a You Only Look Once (YOLOv3) Convolutional Neural Network to Classify Vehicles from Dashcam Photos

Automated vehicle detection and counting systems are becoming increasingly valuable to monitoring highway data. However, few systems have implemented such algorithms for use with a dashcam setup. Based on a review of traditional traffic monitoring methods, a You Only Look Once (YOLO) v3 Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) was trained via Darknet using scraped images of vehicles and traffic from Google. Then, every vehicle within each image was labelled by vehicle type (Personal, Commercial or Heavy Duty) to train the model. The loss curve generated shows a healthy learning rate for the model and successful classification of vehicles for images under ideal conditions. The results indicate that the YOLOv3 CNN works well for classifying vehicles from dashcam photos. Further research is needed to identify factors that could strengthen the performance in low-light and complex background/scenery environments.

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The SPROUT study: Maternal Self-Regulation and Early Childhood Obesity

In the SPROUT study, we seek to understand how mothers’ self-regulation, their nutritional parenting practices, child self-regulation and child weight are all related. Since we know that self-regulation is a risk factor for obesity in adults, we are looking how that self-regulation in a family structure might impact children’s weight. More specifically, we are focusing on the plausible link between self-regulation in mothers, and young children’s adiposity, through the effect of mothers’ self-regulation on engagement in parenting techniques that encourage children’s healthy weight. Our hypothesis is that poor self-regulation in mothers hinders their engagement in the parenting techniques described above, and therefore can lead to less support for a child’s health and excessive gains in weight in their young children. By understanding these relationships, we can more accurately counsel families in the future and work to slow childhood obesity rates. Methods to obtain information about this include recruiting a diverse group of 300 pairs of mothers and their preschoolers and conducting several data collection visits with the pairs over a span of 3 years. There are not yet results due to the pausing of data collection due to the COVID19 pandemic. As UROP students, we worked on participant recruitment, collecting data regarding what families served for dinners, and translation of study materials into Spanish. We also learned the qualities of effective teamwork, which will guide us in future leadership opportunities.

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The SPROUT study: Maternal Self-Regulation and Early Childhood Obesity

In the SPROUT study, we seek to understand how mothers’ self-regulation, their nutritional parenting practices, child self-regulation and child weight are all related. Since we know that self-regulation is a risk factor for obesity in adults, we are looking how that self-regulation in a family structure might impact children’s weight. More specifically, we are focusing on the plausible link between self-regulation in mothers, and young children’s adiposity, through the effect of mothers’ self-regulation on engagement in parenting techniques that encourage children’s healthy weight. Our hypothesis is that poor self-regulation in mothers hinders their engagement in the parenting techniques described above, and therefore can lead to less support for a child’s health and excessive gains in weight in their young children. By understanding these relationships, we can more accurately counsel families in the future and work to slow childhood obesity rates. Methods to obtain information about this include recruiting a diverse group of 300 pairs of mothers and their preschoolers and conducting several data collection visits with the pairs over a span of 3 years. There are not yet results due to the pausing of data collection due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As UROP students, we worked on participant recruitment, collecting data regarding what families served for dinners, and translation of study materials into Spanish. We also learned the qualities of effective teamwork, which will guide us in future leadership opportunities.

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Data Gathering Data Analysis Toward Better Air Quality Outcomes in SW Detroit

In 2019, a resident of southwest Detroit called SDEV to ask for help with air pollution that was getting into her house. The problem was so bad that she had to change furnace filters monthly, which were completely caked with black soot. SDEV visited the resident’s home to learn more and received a furnace filter from the resident. My project involved launching a survey of residents to see how many are experiencing similar indoor air quality concerns and quantifying the information to present at SDEV’s annual member’s meeting and to the City of Detroit’s Council meeting. Using a google form, the survey was created with feedback from University of Michigan Public Health experts and other professional resources. With the internet, phone, and physical canvassing efforts, data was collected from 48 residents. We have found a majority of residents surveyed do experience some kind of air quality problems inside the house (grime, soot collecting on the walls, furnace filter color black, etc.) persisting for at least over a year. SDEV intends to use this data to push for real change and bring more resources to address the problem in people’s homes. By making the data accessible to the public, government decision-makers, and others who can bring resources, SDEV will work with community members and others to address the problem of indoor air quality. We have and will continue to connect with community members to bring awareness to the resources that can mitigate the impact of pollution at home. This work aligns with the recommendations of the community-based participatory research initiative Community Action to Promote Healthy Environments (CAPHE) facilitated by University of Michigan with SDEV and other local partners.

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