Health sciences majors are working with professors in the city of Hayward, near Northeastern’s Oakland campus.
OAKLAND, Calif. — The work may not be glamorous, but Northeastern University health sciences major Saron Dereje hopes that counting cigarette butts around apartment buildings will lead to changes that keep kids in the buildings healthy.
Dereje is one of three undergraduates working with assistant adjunct professor Miki Hong on a long-term study in the city of Hayward, near Northeastern’s Oakland campus, about whether Hayward’s intention to ban smoking in apartment buildings will lead to fewer tobacco-related illnesses, including asthma and cancer.
As part of the study, Hong needs to know how many people are smoking around apartment buildings in Hayward now, before the city has passed a law banning smoking. That’s where the student research comes in.
“If a no-smoking policy is implemented in Hayward, that will help with so many health outcomes for kids who are getting exposed to second-hand smoke,” Dereje said. “I am excited to be part of the small step of collecting the data.”
The study, which received seed funding from Northeastern’s Community to Community Impact Engine and Institute for Health Equity and Social Justice Research, sits at the crossroads of public health and urban planning. Hong wants to know whether a city’s general plan — an aspirational document updated every decade or so — can have a real impact on community health.
In this case, she is tracking whether a plan to ban smoking from apartment buildings will lead to an anti-smoking law and, later, to better health.
“We’re trying to correlate how the plan operates,” Hong said. “Does it move people toward adoption of policies and if so, how effective is it at reducing consumption?”
Last fall, the city of Hayward agreed to allow Hong to track the health impact of its general plan’s goal to make all multi-family housing smoke-free. If the city passes a law to ban smoking, Hong will watch whether behaviors change by tracking neighbor complaints, hospital admissions for asthma and updated collections of cigarette butts found around apartment buildings.
“We have a laboratory, which is the city of Hayward,” Hong said. “That’s why this is compelling research.”
Hong brought on student researchers through the Russell Scholars Program. A consultant who is an expert in tobacco research trained the students in protocols for collecting data, teaching them to pace out 10-foot square areas to count tobacco-related waste, identify precisely where they counted and code the data correctly in an app.
Health sciences major Dina Elmansouri, who is one of the three student researchers, appreciated the rigor of the training.
“Because this project involves epidemiology and statistics, it has helped me figure out that I want to do something involving data collection,” Elmansouri said, “to make sure that the health of communities is prioritized.”
Hong is also collaborating with Northeastern professor Sara Jensen Carr, who teaches architecture, urbanism and landscape.
Urban planning and public health developed into fields in the late 19th century as closely intertwined approaches to address epidemics, Carr said. Following cholera outbreaks in large tenement housing, city planners and health officials worked together to require ventilation and indoor plumbing in housing, she said.
Similarly, she said, this research could reveal the need to develop new ventilation technology for buildings where some residents continue to smoke in spite of smoking bans, so that people in neighboring units aren’t exposed. Ultimately, she said, the study is a concrete opportunity to see whether urban planning policy has the intended effect of protecting public health.
“What I’m interested in with this research is, can we design housing differently to deter smoking,” Carr said. “I’m interested in the efficacy of urban planning ordinances. How do they trickle down?”