The Louisville, Ky., city government, a respiratory health startup called Propeller and the Institute for Healthy Air, Water and Soil joined forces in 2015 to address asthma care in the region, CityLab reports.
Here are five things to know about the 30-month study.
1. Louisville has "some of the worst air quality in the country," according to CityLab, with roughly 12 percent of the city's residents reporting they've been diagnosed with asthma. By contrast, roughly 8 percent of the general U.S. population has been diagnosed with asthma.
2. To address the issue, the interdisciplinary group enrolled almost 1,200 Louisville residents with asthma in a study to test GPS-enabled medication sensors. The researchers attached these sensors to participants' emergency inhalers to determine the location, time and weather at each use.
3. Participants could view this data on a dashboard app to help predict asthma patterns and inform conversations with clinicians. The dashboard also delivered notifications about bad air quality days, allowing participants to prepare appropriately or choose to stay inside.
4. By the end of the study period in late 2016, participants indicated an 82 percent decrease in their use of emergency inhalers. They also reported experiencing more than twice as many days without symptoms compared to prior to study enrollment.
5. The research group, AIR Louisville, also gathered data to help inform the city's environmental efforts. Through the more than 250,000 emergency inhaler uses during the study, the researchers mapped findings about asthma patterns on the neighborhood-level to identify pollutant triggers.
The researchers found the city's west side had the worst respiratory health risks, in part due to high levels of ozone. These findings might help city stakeholders advocate for regulatory and zoning code changes to improve air quality in this area.