Air quality related equity implications of U.S. decarbonization policy.

Climate policies that target greenhouse gas emissions can improve air quality by reducing co-emitted air pollutant emissions. However, the extent to which climate policy could contribute to the targets of reducing existing pollution disparities across different populations remains largely unknown. We quantify potential air pollution exposure reductions under U.S. federal carbon policy, considering implications of resulting health benefits for exposure disparities across U.S. racial/ethnic groups. We focus on policy cases that achieve reductions of 40-60% in 2030 economy-wide carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, when compared with 2005 emissions. The 50% CO2 reduction policy case reduces average fine particulate matter (PM2.5) exposure across racial/ethnic groups, with greatest benefit for non-Hispanic Black (-0.44 µg/m3) and white populations (-0.37 µg/m3). The average exposure disparity for racial/ethnic minorities rises from 12.4% to 13.1%. Applying an optimization approach to multiple emissions reduction scenarios, we find that no alternate combination of reductions from different CO2 sources would substantially mitigate exposure disparities. Results suggest that CO2-based strategies for this range of reductions are insufficient for fully mitigating PM2.5 exposure disparities between white and racial/ethnic minority populations; addressing disparities may require larger-scale structural changes.

Development and evaluation of a just-in-time support system.

OBJECTIVE: To lay the foundation for a framework of just-in-time support (JITS) for novices dealing with urgent, unfamiliar tasks, and to evaluate a JITS system. BACKGROUND: More than 350,000 people die annually of cardiac arrest in the United States. In response, automated defibrillators are advocated that, unfortunately, do not provide important respiratory support. This paper presents elements of a framework for a JITS system that instructs a lay responder to follow a treatment protocol for integrating respiratory support with the use of an automatic external defibrillator. METHOD: We simulated a medical emergency using a high-fidelity patient simulator and asked participants to care for the patient. RESULTS: When using a paper-based NASA treatment protocol, participants made more errors and took longer to stabilize the injured person than when using the JITS system. CONCLUSION: These findings demonstrate the benefit of a JITS system to instruct novices in unfamiliar tasks. APPLICATION: The JITS system has the potential to improve the treatment outcome of victims of cardiac arrest. The JITS framework can be applied to many situations in which novices deal with urgent tasks without expertise available.