Title of the project: “Air Pollution and Pregnancy Complications in Complex Urban Environments: Risks, Heterogeneity, and Mechanisms”
Description: In this $2.5 million study funded by National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, researchers from UCI and Kaiser Permanente Southern California will work together to examine the risk of pregnancy complications from exposure to air pollutant mixtures of both gases and particulate matter using a large longitudinal (pre-conception through postpartum) pregnancy cohort in southern California that have prospectively-recorded clinical data and residential addresses. The study will leverage state-of-the-art spatiotemporal air pollution modeling and novel statistical methods with high quality and rich clinical information. In addition to the main associations between individual-level air pollution exposure and risk of pregnancy complications, the researchers will examine heterogeneity of risk by socioeconomic status, maternal and other environmental factors (e.g. green space, weather), potential underlying mechanisms, susceptible sub-populations, and time windows of susceptibility. Further, they will examine spatially-varying risk, which can guide a targeted approach, allowing policy-makers to focus on areas where pollution reduction is likely to reap the greatest health benefits.