Led by Jonathan Patz, the Center for Health, Energy, and Environmental Research (CHEER) is engaging with community leaders in Milwaukee to better understand communities’ health priorities. Their goal is to guide policy-relevant research on the health and air quality impacts of different energy, transportation, land use, and infrastructure policies and future scenarios. With researchers from UW–Madison, UW–Milwaukee, and the Medical College of Wisconsin, the team has engaged with their Community Advisory Board of experts to build a policy menu of proposed actions for the city.
Morgan Edwards, chair of the Nelson Institute’s energy, analysis, and policy program and assistant professor of public affairs, and her team are modeling the impacts these choices could have on the energy systems including the type and location of different energy generation, and the subsequent changes in emissions. With support from CHEER’s Data Science Core team members Kyle Cranmer and Steve Wangen, Monica Harkey in the Holloway Group is developing new tools for fine scale modeling of air pollutants across the city of Milwaukee by census block.
These data are being connected to real health data, including through a collaboration with Amy Kalkbrenner at UW–Milwaukee and the Milwaukee Public Schools that was recently featured in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
