Air quality and asthma focus of Rice workshop for HISD

Rice University hosted a workshop June 19 to strategize on ways to protect Houston students with asthma. Rice’s Katherine Ensor, a professor of statistics, and Loren Raun, a faculty fellow of statistics, environmental analysis and decision making who also works with the city, are leading an ongoing Houston Endowment-backed study to understand the relationship between pollution and ambulance calls to treat asthma patients. Their goal is to warn school nurses on high asthma risk days attributed to air quality up to three days in advance of increased airborne risks. The workshop brought representatives of the city bureau of pollution control and prevention, the Environmental Protection Agency and Rice together with school nurses and administrators from the Houston Independent School District, whose input Raun said is critical to helping students most at risk of attacks. Participants gathered for a tour of the city’s air quality monitoring vehicle behind Duncan Hall before at the start of the session. Photo by Donald Soward