Green Education Inc. recently donated 217 air purifiers to the Long Beach Alliance for Children with Asthma (LBACA) to benefit children and their families affected by asthma. The Long Beach Alliance for Children with Asthma is a community coalition – part of the Children’s Pulmonary Institute at MemorialCare Miller Children’s & Women’s Hospital Long Beach – that is dedicated to improving the lives of children with asthma in the greater Long Beach area.
One way LBACA achieves this is through its Community Health Worker Asthma Home Visitation Program, which includes home environmental assessments to identify what might trigger a child’s asthma symptoms. Once triggers are identified, the community health workers educate families to improve their child’s asthma and provide free non-toxic cleaning supplies and hypoallergenic mattress and pillow covers to minimize household triggers. Those free supplies now include more than 200 high performing air purifiers.
Air purifiers use a system of internal fans to pull the air in a room through a series of filters that remove harmful airborne particles like dust, pollen and bacteria. The air purifier then circulates the purified air back into the room. This process repeats itself several times an hour, keeping the environment healthy.
“Air purifiers can help reduce exposure to allergenic and irritant materials inside the home of families that have been enrolled in our program,” says Sylvia Betancourt, program manager, Long Beach Alliance for Children with Asthma. “Air purifiers won’t treat asthma, however as triggers are minimized in the home, health outcomes can improve for the child.”
Asthma that is well controlled can reduce hospitalizations, emergency department visits, and school absenteeism, while enhancing the child’s quality of life.
The air purifiers donated by Green Education Inc. are high-performing, meaning they can reach a large area inside the home, beyond one room.
“The air purifiers we received are valued between $900 and $1,600,” says Betancourt. “Many of the families enrolled in our program may not have the means to have this important tool in their home otherwise.”
As a nonprofit, Green Education Inc. partners with organizations in the community to educate, revitalize and transform communities into green sustainable neighborhoods, creating healthy and energy efficient environments in the process.
This is not the first time LBACA has worked with Green Education, Inc. Both organizations participated in Long Beach’s Environmental Health Workgroup, which focuses on improving the environmental health and air quality for all residents in West and Central Long Beach.