Government and community partnership in reducing air pollution exposure

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Urban air quality raises environmental justice issues when minority or vulnerable communities suffer disproportionate exposures. The proposed initiative will develop a campus-community partnership to promote relevant public policy. This entails 1) building community capacity so that the community can become a partner in the development of an innovative air quality research program and 2) developing multi-stakeholder partnerships by reaching beyond the community, to planners, policy-makers, and representatives from the constituency offices of all levels of government. The proposed study engages the Bathurst Quay Neighborhood Association (BQNA), the City of Toronto, PortsToronto, and a diverse team of researchers at the University of Toronto and the Southern Ontario Center for Atmospheric Aerosol Research (SOCAAR). The SOCAAR team is well positioned to initiate and study community partnerships in air pollution, owing to a track record of various team members who have engaged with communities, the non-profit sector, and local governments. Research partnerships in air quality have made great strides in terms of the development of unique and novel methods for measuring, characterizing, and modelling air quality. In order to accelerate the implementation of these novel approaches in policy appraisal, at the local and national level, campus-community partnerships with government participation are key. At the level of Canada, such partnerships will change policy practices much faster than the traditional "knowledge dissemination from research to policy model". When policy-makers actually have the opportunity to participate in the air quality research and its implementation in a local context, the uptake of novel air quality analysis in policy appraisal at the Canadian level is accelerated.