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

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 AfricanAmerican population (10.6%) than white population (7.7%). Poverty level has an impact as well, with twice asmuch asthma incidence in people below 100% of the poverty threshold as compared to people above 450% ofthe threshold. Racial-ethnic and socioeconomic health disparities in the US due to air pollution exposure are welldocumented and have persisted despite overall decreases in ozone and particulate matter pollution. Thisdisproportionate exposure reflects generations of discriminatory practices including racially-segregatedresidential policies that result in communities of color being more frequently located near major sources of airpollution, both industrial and transportation-related. The proposed research project seeks to address healthdisparities related to air pollution by enabling self-monitoring of environmental triggers of asthma and otherrespiratory diseases, so that the patients are empowered for self-management of their disease. This study willdevelop and test a wearable sensor array with a small form-factor for monitoring personal exposure to severalimportant air pollutants, and then pilot this device in a small panel of African-American adults with physician diagnosed asthma. The device will be sensitive to a variety of primary and secondary pollutants from both motor vehicle 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. Thedevice will be able to connect to Bluetooth-enabled smartphones for data logging and display purposes, yet itwill 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. Theseparticipants will use the device to monitor their air pollution exposure for one month. During this month, they willalso measure their lung function twice per day using a small commercially-available spirometer that we willprovide them. We will develop a smartphone application that will clearly display air quality data in an intuitivecolor-coded display. The app will also include lung function data from spirometry in a percent-predicted scorerelative to expected values based on age, height, sex and race. The overall goal of this project is to demonstratethe feasibility of a wearable device to assist in the identification of air pollution-related asthma triggers and toempower asthma patients to improve their health by reducing exposure.