Creating just, healthy cities: challenging inequalities in health deprivation from air pollution in minority communities

概述：该项目旨在调查围绕空气污染和广泛传播的疾病（重点是COVID-19[1]）以及社会不平等（即社会经济地位，种族和获得健康/福利支持）的新问题。研究问题-1：英国低收入和/或BAME社区的成员是否暴露于比其他人口更高的空气污染水平;这些公民是否受到当前英国规划（住房），社会福利和卫生政策的相对不利影响;以及如何调整卫生和空气污染政策以减轻这种情况？研究问题2：空气污染暴露、社会经济地位、种族和获得健康/福利支持以及COVID-19的结果和严重程度之间是否存在联系（在现有数据中）？全球大流行导致人们早期认识到在感染COVID-19等疾病的脆弱性和后果严重性方面存在种族差异[2]。从生物文化的角度来看，这种群体间易感性的差异不仅仅与生物学或基因有关。早期研究表明，社会经济因素（如就业和住房状况）可能导致健康差异，并在COVID-19大流行期间导致不平等，这些健康不平等/结果与暴露于空气污染也可能存在联系，空气污染是一种日益严重的全球健康威胁，社会贫困地区往往遭受最大的暴露，尽管排放量最少[3]。社会经济贫困、住房、种族、空气污染暴露和健康风险之间的这种必然联系[4]需要加以探索，以确保社会向前发展中的健康平等和社会正义。不幸的是，在COVID-19大流行期间，只有早期的探索性研究才对这些问题进行了研究，因此，在理解空间方面存在着重大的研究空白，在大流行病背景下，空气污染的时间演变及其与健康不平等和种族差异相关的影响。该博士旨在利用定量和定性技术来解决这一研究空白，以调查主要空气污染物，COVID-19实例和结果以及社会经济描述符之间的联系（如族裔和贫困），并了解关键政策对低收入和黑人、亚裔和少数族裔社区的影响，需要解决的结构性问题往往意味着这些社区被推到社会中更脆弱的生活领域。 图1：2020年6月29日至2021年1月31日按种族划分的经统计学调整的COVID-19英国死亡率（资料来源：gov.uk）。Alt Text：到2020年冬季，比率突然上升，其他，亚洲，黑人和混血种族类别明显高于白色。

Overview: This project aims to investigate emerging issues around air pollution and wide spread disease (focusing on COVID-19[1]) and inequalities in society, namely, socioeconomic status, ethnicity and access to health/welfare support. Research Questions-1: Are members of UK lower income and/or BAME communities exposed to higher levels of air pollution than other demographics; are these citizens being relatively disadvantaged by current UK planning (housing), social welfare and health policies; and how could health and air pollution policies be adjusted to mitigate this? Research Questions-2: Do linkages exist (in existing data) between air pollution exposure, socioeconomic status, ethnicity and access to health/welfare support, and outcome and severity of COVID-19?The global pandemic resulted in early recognition of an ethnic disparity in vulnerability to contracting diseases such as COVID-19, and outcome severity [2]. Bio-culturally, this inter-population variation in susceptibility relates to more than biology or genes. Early research suggests that socio-economic factors e.g. employment and housing status may have led to health disparities and resulted in inequalities during the COVID-19 pandemic, and that there may also be linkages with respect to these health inequalities/outcomes and exposure to air pollution, a growing global threat to health with deprived areas of society often suffering from greatest exposure despite contributing least to emissions[3]. This consequential link between socioeconomic deprivation, housing, ethnicity, air pollution exposure and health risks[4] need to be explored to ensure health equality and social justice in society moving forward.Unfortunately, only early exploratory studies have been conducted on these issues during the COVID-19 pandemic, as such there exists a major research gap in understanding spatio-temporal evolution of air pollution and its impacts linked to health inequalities and ethnic disparity on the backdrop of a major pandemic. This PhD aims to address this research gap using quantitative and qualitative techniques to investigate linkages between key air pollutants, COVID-19 instance and outcome, and socio-economic descriptors (e.g. ethnicity and deprivation) and also to understand the impacts of key policies on low-income and BAME communities, and the structural issues that need to be tackled that often mean such communities get pushed to more vulnerable living areas of society. Figure 1: Age-adjusted COVID-19 UK mortality rate between 29th June 2020 and 31st January 2021 by ethnic group (source: gov.uk). Alt Text: Sudden rise in rate ~ winter 2020, with other, Asian, black and mixed-race ethnic categories significantly higher than white.