Cleveland residents have another opportunity Wednesday to share their air quality concerns with city health officials.
The next engagement session with Cleveland Department of Public Health's Division of Air Quality will provide attendees with a chance to learn more about upcoming efforts addressing indoor and outdoor air quality and childhood asthma cases.
Residents should come prepared to share their own experiences, Chief of Air Pollution Outreach Christina Yoka said.
"What are their specific air quality concerns? Why are they coming? How do they want to be engaged? How can we help them?" Yoka said. "If they want to come with that type of information, then we would love to hear it."
The meeting will be held at 6 p.m. Wednesday at Famicos Foundation in Cleveland's Hough neighborhood. Yoka will also provide updated data on air quality from CLEANinCLE sensors installed earlier this year and discuss upcoming projects and programs to better understand and address residents' air quality concerns.
Through the new Breathe Easy Everyday Project, the Division of Air Quality will help those participants improve indoor air quality by helping residents identify the triggers of childhood asthma in their homes, Yoka said.
"We can then be those eyes in a home. Where the resident can then take that information back to their asthma provider and we can take a look in the home and see, okay, this might be something that's contributing to your asthma."
The national average for childhood asthma rates is about 8%, but in some parts of Cleveland that rate jumps to as high as 25%, Yoka said. A report, published by Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America earlier this month, ranked Cleveland fifth amongst 20 cities with the highest asthma prevalence in the country.
Health officials can help families make small changes to reduce the frequency and severity of asthma attacks in the home, Yoka said.
"We heard of a resident at one of our CLEANinCLE meetings that she tried to do the detective work on her own to see what was happening in her home and she found that when her daughter took off her shoes before she came into the house, her asthma attacks lessened," she said." So there are things that can be done, simple things."
The program is currently accepting applications and will serve 20 residents a year. The division is set to launch a mobile air quality monitoring station and a residential ride-along project in the coming months.
