A Low-Cost Wearable Connected Health Device for Monitoring Environmental Pollution Triggers of Asthma in Communities with Health Disparities

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Project Abstract Asthma affects 25 million Americans, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) affects 16 million, together costing 130 billion USD annually to the US healthcare system. Asthma is more prevalent in African American population (10.6%) than white population (7.7%). Poverty level has an impact as well, with twice as much asthma incidence in people below 100% of the poverty threshold as compared to people above 450% of the threshold. Racial-ethnic and socioeconomic health disparities in the US due to air pollution exposure are well documented and have persisted despite overall decreases in ozone and particulate matter pollution. This disproportionate exposure reflects generations of discriminatory practices including racially-segregated residential policies that result in communities of color being more frequently located near major sources of air pollution, both industrial and transportation-related. The proposed research project seeks to address health disparities related to air pollution by enabling self-monitoring of environmental triggers of asthma and other respiratory diseases, so that the patients are empowered for self-management of their disease. This study will develop and test a wearable sensor array with a small form-factor for monitoring personal exposure to several important air pollutants, and then pilot this device in a small panel of African-American adults with physiciandiagnosed asthma. The device will be sensitive to a variety of primary and secondary pollutants from both motorvehicle traffic and industrial emissions. It will employ metal oxide semiconductor sensors to measure ozone, nitrogen dioxide, and volatile organic compounds as well as relative humidity and ambient temperature. The device will be able to connect to Bluetooth-enabled smartphones for data logging and display purposes, yet it will be small enough to be worn on the wrist. We will validate the utility of this device for improving health by recruiting 20 African-American adults who live in the Atlanta area and have been diagnosed with asthma. These participants will use the device to monitor their air pollution exposure for one month. During this month, they will also measure their lung function twice per day using a small commercially-available spirometer that we will provide them. We will develop a smartphone application that will clearly display air quality data in an intuitive color-coded display. The app will also include lung function data from spirometry in a percent-predicted score relative to expected values based on age, height, sex and race. The overall goal of this project is to demonstrate the feasibility of a wearable device to assist in the identification of air pollution-related asthma triggers and to empower asthma patients to improve their health by reducing exposure.