It’s a drizzly, gray August morning. But inside Hephatha Lutheran Church, on Locust and 18th, the mood is celebratory. Warm yellow light pours through stained glass windows, and teenagers participating in the church’s youth ministry summer program are running around.
All summer, they’ve been learning about air quality, and how it’s connected to their health. Here in the 53206 zip code, where Hephatha is located, residents have some of the highest rates of hospitalizations and emergency department visits related to asthma.
"There’s numbers of families here where asthma is most likely something that runs in their family, so to speak,” says Pastor Mary Martha Kannass.
In 53206, the high asthma burden is linked to poor housing conditions and disproportionate exposure to air pollution. A 2022 Clean Wisconsin analysis found that Black Wisconsinites are exposed to 41% more soot pollution than the state average, one of the highest such disparities in the country.
The air quality data the church is using comes from a monitor just a couple blocks away, at the Hopkins Lloyd community school, meaning it’s hyper-local and hyper-relevant.
That’s the idea behind the Love My Air Wisconsin program: Schools are hubs for information. Real-time, local data from one school-based sensor can be used to improve the health of its surrounding community.
This past year, Love My Air installed monitors at 15 Milwaukee elementary schools in neighborhoods with high asthma burdens. The program also provides teachers with lesson plans on air quality awareness and helps schools with outreach to families. In the upcoming school year, it plans to install monitors at more K-8 schools, plus one high school.
Hephatha Lutheran Church has long been a champion for health in its neighborhood, from maternal and baby health to lead poisoning prevention. That led the school nurse at Hopkins Lloyd to connect Love My Air with Pastor Mary Martha.
“Doing work within a group of people, we’re not going to make assumptions about what’s important to them or how things should work out in their community,” says Carissa Hoium, who leads the environmental health program for the Children’s Health Alliance of Wisconsin. “It is vital to involve them in the work so that they have a voice in what happens in their neighborhoods.”
Love My Air stresses the importance of staying active while also regularly monitoring the air quality. Hoium says they tailor resource offerings depending on the community's needs; one of the focuses at Hephatha has also been asthma management and education.
If the air quality is green — which is healthy — it’s a great day to be active outside, they say. If it's orange — meaning it's unhealthy for sensitive groups — it’s OK to go outside for a little bit, although they suggest limiting your exertion and taking plenty of breaks. And the air quality is purple — which is unhealthy for everyone — it’s a good day to play indoors.
This summer, two high schoolers in the youth ministry took the lead in teaching their peers. Skie-Lee Meadows, one of the clean air ambassadors, says it’s easy to check the air quality on Love My Air’s app. She does it every morning, just like checking the weather.
“Some of the members at our church have asthma, so just them being aware of it and letting them know that it’s important — it’s great to have the opportunity to do that,” Meadows says.
This work is a natural fit for a congregation interested in caring for its neighbors.
“The primary, underlying reason for all of our work — as of course, we’re a faith community — is this theological understanding that every breath comes from God, and that the air and the environment are gifts from God,” Pastor Mary Martha says. “And so we understand that we are caretakers of this beautiful creation.”
With climate change expected to bring more conditions for poor air quality, she says learning to manage that — and ease people’s suffering — is what it looks like to take care of creation.
Using mobile sensors provided by Love My Air, the high schoolers connected the dots between air quality and the particulars of their environment: whether adults were smoking or trucks were passing a busy intersection.
Amira Pechauer, another ambassador, says this helped her better understand what had mostly been an invisible problem, until wildfire smoke filled the skies last year. This summer, she was shocked to learn firework displays on the Fourth of July led the air quality to register as purple.
“It was only for a couple hours, but that was really crazy to me,” she says.
The program is partly funded by President Joe Biden’s landmark climate change bill, the Inflation Reduction Act. It’s been a key talking point for Democrats on the campaign trail in this year’s presidential election.
Like Congresswoman Gwen Moore, who toured the Love My Air program with other public health leaders in early August to mark the bill’s second anniversary.
“I am in church, so I can tell the truth,” she says. “Not a single Republican voted for the Inflation Reduction Act.”
Afterwards, church members celebrated with nachos and cake. Sitting together are the Branch sisters, Natalie and Deanna. They’ve been coming here since they were kids. Now they have kids of their own.
Natalie says her daughter brought home one of the mobile sensors from Love My Air. They watched how air quality changed when she was walking the dog or went through different rooms in the house.
“It didn’t really fluctuate that much, except for inside, when I do incense or when we have smoke in the house from me cooking and not getting to the food in time,” Natalie says, laughing.
Their family is no stranger to asthma. Natalie’s daughter has it. And so do Deanna and her oldest son. Deanna says they’ve been learning to manage their asthma together.
“Now there’s an app that my son — because he has a phone now, he’s 13 — he can test and see if it’s a good idea to be outside, to bring a water bottle, to make sure [he] brings his inhaler,” Deanna says.
The Branch sisters say that what they’ve learned about air quality hasn’t changed everything they do. But it’s useful information — and a reminder to prioritize their health — as they go about their day.
