‘Who Is Most Affected by Our Research?’.

Madeleine Scammell (SPH’08) Associate Professor of Environmental Health

Breakfast: Coffee and a bag of nuts (“I was thinking this morning about how everyone in this series says oatmeal.”)

Hometown: Orleans, Massachusetts

Extracurricular: “What’s that?”

How do you describe the bulk of your public health work?

When I give the elevator pitch of what I do, I say I work in a lot of different areas, on many exposures and health outcomes, and the common thread that ties them all together is engagement of the people affected. I ask, “Who will be most affected by the results, are they engaged, and will this be meaningful to them?” It doesn’t mean I value community engaged research over all research, it’s just that for me, asking these questions helps me narrow the world of opportunities.

Why is community involvement important to you?

It comes down to something that this school has gotten a lot of attention for highlighting: health inequalities and health disparities. I think there are also huge disparities in access to scientific resources. Some of the hardest questions come from people who are on the front lines of hazardous working and living conditions, and they can’t just decide to do a study on the consequences of their exposures. To reduce health inequalities, it’s really important that we have a direct line of communication between our science, and scientists, and the communities who could benefit.

Ideally, understanding the consequences of our exposures or actions would lead to prevention and policies that protect workers and communities.

It also isn’t just about scientists providing scientific resources and expertise, it’s also about listening. It’s important to me, as a scientist, to listen to the experience and observations of non-scientists, people who aren’t public health professionals. I learn a lot.

You do a lot of work in Chelsea, where you live. Can you give some examples of that work?

I moved to Chelsea so I could be close to my mom, who moved there in 1980 (I lived with my dad on the Cape). I was also intentional about being part of a community where I’m doing work.

In 2006, there was a proposal for a diesel fuel power plant in Chelsea, across the street from the elementary school complex where every single elementary school child in the city goes. Chelsea residents successfully opposed the proposal, but continued to focus on monitoring and improving air quality. The power plant victory created momentum for a lot of great projects. I worked with a community organization to train youth and other community members to use particulate matter air monitors around the city to identify some air pollution hot spots. Other SPH faculty and students assisted with this, and David Ozonoff helped us get funding via the BU Superfund Research Program.

We knew that the New England Produce Center would be a diesel hot spot: 37,000 diesel trucks go in there each year, and idle for long periods of time because they’re refrigerated trucks carrying fruits and vegetables waiting to offload.

Just next door to the produce center was King Arthur’s Lounge—it has since closed, but it was a strip club/hotel. That whole part of town had a shady feel to it. Roseann Bongiovanni, who runs the Chelsea environmental group GreenRoots, once said, “I was always told that good girls don’t go to the produce center.” But Cate Maas—a community member and activist—was especially determined. She said, “This is one of the hottest spots in Chelsea, and we’re going to get in,” and she did. She met with the management, and she got them on board. She convinced the industry that burning dirty fuel was increasingly expensive, so hooking up to electricity would save the industry hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. She also appealed to their concerns about air quality and improving the health of their workers and of the residents.

They agreed to apply for funding, and work collaboratively with a number of different organizations and agencies, including the city, on air improvement efforts led by the local environmental justice organization. Together, Cate and Roseann, working with all partners, got four or more grants to retrofit the engines and equipment that previously ran on very dirty red diesel fuel. This has had a tremendously positive impact on the air quality, and as Cate would say, it was a win-win for the community and for the market.

Sometimes you don’t need more research on the problems. What you need are solutions. I find it incredibly rewarding to work in my own community with creative people who see and find solutions—like Cate, who’s a retired school social worker, and started reading Trucker Magazine to get the inside scoop on those “reefer engines.”

Our Center for Research on Environmental and Social Stressors and Housing across the Lifecourse (CRESSH) is in some ways related to that whole experience. The air monitoring continues in the city, and we’re bringing it indoors. Chelsea also actually just won the 2017 Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Culture of Health Prize.

Do you think community collaboration in science is more important now, at a time when public distrust of science is particularly high?

When I was 19, I worked on a fishing pier. It was the summer after my freshman year of college, and I remember one of the fishermen saying to me, “You can always tell a college student, because they tell you in the first minute of conversation that they’re a college student.” I grew up in a town where going to a university required going away, and going away wasn’t a given. Coming back home, I could feel that something intangible separated those of us who left from those who stayed. It wasn’t always easy to navigate.

My point is that there have always been class and educational attainment differences in communities, in society, and science is just part of that, in my opinion. A formal education should not trump, or minimize, the experience of people without such an education. I feel aware of those differences in many interactions with people, but I really like trying to focus on the commonalities, the questions, and work and learn together.

I’m really trying not to feel despair, but I’m certainly concerned about regressive and destructive policies all around, from threats to academic freedom to funding for NIH and the EPA and the CDC—and now the municipalities and areas suffering after hurricanes. I don’t know what the future is going to be, but I think we have always had to deal with the challenge that a relatively privileged few are able to access higher education, and science. The more we can even the field and engage people in finding solutions to their problems—regardless of their political perspective—the better. Everybody wants to breathe clean air and drink safe water and eat healthy food, right?

—Michelle Samuels