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The Data2Breathe Learning Program
Data2Breathe is a new three-year learning program for which we are seeking funding in 2021. We are co-designing this program within our Black and Puerto Rican communities, in support of improving health outcomes for teen girls, as well as improving data fluency and awareness of data-related careers.
What is the Data2Breathe
Learning Program about?
Is this program based on research?
Yes, this interdisciplinary learning program is based on research led by Donna Auguste, PhD.
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Dr. Auguste's work stands on the shoulders of many researchers whose published work preceded her own, such as Dr. Shelly Miller, Dr. Joseph Polman, Dr. Tamara Clegg, and many others.
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Prospective co-designers, who have expressed interest in participating when the program design phase is ready to begin, include educators, parents, teens, engineers and scientists who are Puerto Rican and/or Black, and who are female or non-binary. Our team will include diversity beyond these intersectional communities, but we specify these communities because they are underrepresented in data science and STEM, yet overrepresented in asthma prevalence. We will amplify these voices.
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The curriculum and outcomes from the Data2Breathe Learning Program will be shared with other community groups and researchers. The long-term goal is to teach over a million U.S. youth who have asthma, as well as millions in other countries, to use air quality data fluency to help manage their asthma. With this applied and actionable introduction to data science, some of these youth may choose to pursue careers that involve data science.
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In the United States, approximately 26 million people have asthma, impacting Black and Puerto Rican people in disproportionately high numbers. Approximately 10.1% of Black people have asthma. Approximately 12.8% of Puerto Rican people have asthma. Prevalence rates in all other racial/ethnic demographic groups are less than 8%. (source: CDC, Current Asthma Prevalence, 2017, link)
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The Data2Breathe Learning Program is co-designed to reach 1600 Black and/or Puerto Rican girls*, 13 - 18 years old. Each girl in the program is someone who has asthma and/or has a sibling with asthma. In four 6-month cohorts over a 3-year period of time, the participating girls will have these experiences via remote/virtual/online learning workshops:
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learn to build their own indoor air quality sensors, using a hardware and software kit that we will co-design within our communities (measuring particulates and volatile organic compounds);
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learn to correlate real-time residential air quality data with their own and/or their sibling's asthma symptoms;
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identify potential asthma triggers;
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create data visualizations (w/ anonymized data), to help others learn about meanings in data;
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learn about careers involving data science and embedded machine learning (also known as TinyML);
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meet and interact with Black/African-American/Puerto Rican/Latinx/women engineers and scientists who will be mentors and role models throughout the program;
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provide feedback to improve the Data2Breathe curriculum and learning experiences for future participants.
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Collecting data to identify potential asthma triggers is especially important when cooking, using cleaning products, and using personal care products. During the COVID pandemic, exposure to potential triggers may be higher than pre-pandemic because people are disinfecting surfaces more often (source: CDC, People with moderate to severe asthma, 2021, link ), and people are staying indoors, at home, more often.
*Our program prioritizes these underrepresented communities. These are the voices we amplify because they often unheard, overlooked, or underestimated. However, we are a non-discriminatory organization, and we welcome participants from other communities who want to be a part of Data2Breathe. We value diverse collaboration.
Contact
If you are interested in sponsoring or providing funding in support of the Data2Breathe Learning Program, please contact work (at) augusteresearchgroup.com .
We partner with a non-profit 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor for tax-deductible funding support.
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If you are interested in participating in the Data2Breathe Learning Program, also please contact work (at) augusteresearchgroup.com .