Seed Funding to Assess and Improve Air Quality in Low- and Middle-Income Countries

What:  Ideas Lab on clean air in the first 1000 days of life

Who: UB faculty from ANY DISCPLINE interested in measuring air quality, understanding its consequences, or developing solutions for the youngest members of society.  No previous experience in LMIC or working directly on measurement, health impacts, or interventions related to air quality is required.  As part of their Expression of Interest (below), faculty are welcome to nominate one postdoctoral fellow to participate in the Ideas Lab.  Their statement should include explanation how the postdoc’s unique perspective would contribute to the Ideas Lab.

When:  June 13-15, 2017

Where:  403 Hayes Hall, UB South Campus

How:  Between 25-30 participants will be selected. They will form interdisciplinary teams to address various aspects of air quality in the first 1000 days of life, focusing on LMIC.  The most successful teams will exploit the diverse backgrounds and expertise of their participants to generate creative, but practical, solutions to complex problems. Teams are aided by expert mentors, who provide feedback and encourage innovation.    

Application Requirements: After registering, applicants will submit a single PDF file to globalhealth@buffalo.edu which includes an NIH or NSF-style biosketch and a 100 word statement addressing their approach to collaborative team work. Those faculty members nominating postdocs or graduate students should include a separate PDF file with the nominee's CV and a brief statement addressing what unique perspective the nominee will bring to the discussion.

According to the World Health Organization, only 1 in 10 people breathe safe air, and air pollution is on the rise.  Poor air quality, a silent killer, initiates chronic health problems and causes early deaths.  It also has detrimental effects on fetal and postnatal growth and development.  Despite decades of efforts to improve air quality, around the world, particularly in LMIC, pregnant women and young children continue to breathe polluted air.  For many, inadequate air quality is inescapable, with exposure occurring consistently during everyday indoor and outdoor tasks. In LMIC, the people most likely to breathe poor-quality air are also those who experience hunger, malnutrition, infectious disease, conflict, and natural disasters.  In these most affected areas, the problem of air pollution is intractable, even as consequences for young children and other vulnerable groups are acknowledged.  This pernicious health inequity is obviously unacceptable, but meaningfully addressing it requires bright minds willing to work together in a search of inventive solutions. 

The problem of poor air quality during a child’s first 1000 days is complex and multi-faceted, requiring innovative and multi-disciplinary thinking to measure it, understand its consequences, and generate solutions. To address these challenges, UB’s Community for Global Health Equity (CGHE) will host a 3-day Ideas Lab.

An Ideas lab is a creative workshop designed to articulate, explore, and address a problem that may be outside of traditional fields of study.  Such workshops have been employed by NSF and other funding agencies to bring together diverse scholars motivated to contribute individual expertise to a shared goal.  An IDEAS Lab approaches “big thinking” by giving interdisciplinary teams uninterrupted time and space to think creatively and develop innovative solutions to complex problems.  The Air Quality Ideas Lab at UB will be hosted by Know Innovation, Inc., a leadership incubator, and will provide a forum for UB researchers to think outside of the box, develop unexpected solutions with unlikely collaborators, and compete for up to $50,000 of seed funding, awarded by the Community for Global Health Equity.