3:45pm | The Long Beach Board of Harbor Commissioners recently granted a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting clean air and healthy lungs through research, education and technology more than $355,000 to address and help reduce asthma and lung health problems in kids living within a 3-mile radius of the Port of Long Beach.
The funds awarded to BREATHE California of Los Angeles County are part of a $5 million funding project though the Port of Long Beach Mitigation Grant Program. The program is part of what the port calls a “comprehensive strategy to offset the impacts of port-related operations in the community, primarily air pollution risks for vulnerable groups such as children and seniors” on its website.
BREATHE LA over the next three years plans to decrease school absenteeism, reduce hospitalizations and promote personal responsibility for the surrounding environment among eligible youth.
In Long Beach, 21.9 percent of children have asthma, according to the Long Beach Alliance for Children with Asthma Report Card.
BREATHE LA will administer its O24u program on the campuses of 36 local elementary school sites. Consisting of environmental health education activities developed by educators and registered respiratory therapists, O24u has been approved by local school officials, youth organizations and physicians as an effective environmental education and asthma management program, according to information provided by BREATHE LA.
The nonprofit’s health educators will train school facilitators to ensure their understanding of and ability to teach the curriculum to children. BREATHE LA said it also plans to hold special sessions with parents living in the area to reinforce key lessons.
“BREATHE LA’s O24u grant will go to health programs that directly help the people most affected by air pollution from the goods movement industry,” said Nick Sramek, president of the Long Beach Board of Harbor Commissioners, in a statement. “We continue to work to reduce air pollution at the source, but the BREATHE LA and other new mitigation grants help us address the overall effects of the port’s presence.”
Upon the program’s culmination at the end of the third year, BREATHE LA said it hopes to have achieved a 10 percent to 15 percent decrease in absenteeism of students undiagnosed with asthma, which translates to 152 missed school days.
In addition, it aims to have reduced emergency room visits and hospitalizations relating to asthma, which would allow the city of Long Beach to save a potential $2.7 million. (That sum is based on UCLA California Health Interview Survey data from 2005 regarding Long Beach/South Bay area children with asthma, which reveals that approximately 30 percent missed 1-2 days of school. Of those undiagnosed, 61 percent missed at least one day of school due to breathing issues, 19 percent missed 3-4 days, 12 percent missed 5-10 days and 9 percent missed more than 11 days.)
“Support from the Port of Long Beach provides a large step to help BREATHE LA accomplish its mission to make the Los Angeles region a much healthier and safer place to live,” said Dr. Richard Barbers, a pulmonary specialist, chair of the BREATHE LA Board of Directors and a professor of medicine at USC’s Keck School of Medicine, in a statement.
Partnering with BREATHE LA for its O24u program funded by the port are the Long Beach WRAP Afterschool Program, Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Long Beach, ICES Education, Long Beach Unified School District, YMCA of Greater Long Beach, Camp Fire USA Long Beach Area Council, the city of Long Beach and the Long Beach Community Action Partnership.