Michigan Center for the Environment and Children's Health (MCECH)
From 1999 to 2004 this multidiciplinary Center, jointly funded by NIH and the US EPA, launched the Community Action Against Asthma (CAAA) partnership and brought a community-based participatory approach to the study of asthma and the environment in the Detroit area. Overall goal of MCECH was to investigate the environmental, pathophysiological and clinical mechanisms of childhood asthma which translated into risk assessment and comprehensive community and household level interventions aimed at increasing knowledge and behaviors to reduce asthma-related environmental triggers to individuals and neighborhoods. There were three core projects of MCECH - two of which were a combined exposure assessment and intervention project which was implemented in the southwest and east sides of Detroit (CAAA), and one of which was based at the University of Michigan School of Medicine. The three projects were engaged in coordinated interdisciplinary research aimed at:
increasing knowledge and behavior to reduce environmental hazards in households and neighborhoods, thereby improving asthma-related health status, through a community-based household and neighborhood level intervention;- examining the effects of daily and seasonal fluctuations in indoor and outdoor ambient air quality on pulmonary function and severity of asthma symptoms; and
- determining the effects of allergen-induced local, excessive production of chemokines on redox status and innervation of the bronchial tree.