Clean Air South is a new partnership, co-hosted by the Sustainability and Resilience Institute and Wessex Health Partners with the aim of addressing the urgent issue of air pollution.
At an event held on 16 July, academics and healthcare professionals gathered to share initial findings from a landmark report into the state of air quality in the Wessex area.
Professor John Boswell, co-director of Centre for the South, and Adam Meylan-Stevenson, Policy Associate at the University of Southampton, identified gaps in evidence and opportunities for local policy makers to implement solutions.
Co-author John Boswell explains: “The collective sense is that we already know quite a lot about the causes and effects of poor air quality in the central south area, but there is a need to better build the case with local policymakers in order to push forward with necessary changes.”
Sharing his expertise at the event, Professor Craig Hutton, director of Sustainability and Resilience Institute, said: “Air quality in Wessex is an interdisciplinary issue taking in politics, academics, policy – all of these need to come together with people working in health to understand how the lack of air quality impacts people’s lives. In this most recent meeting, we really dug in, and we really got talking to start tackling this difficult issue.”
Service lead for Public Protection at Winchester City Council, David Ingram, also attended the event and shared his excitement to contribute to “a truly collaborative regional project to improve data access, gather further comprehensive targeted data sets and release that potential through more in-depth research projects,” further cementing the importance of policy in the implementation of sustainability projects.
Want to learn more about this pressing topic? The full report will be released in the Autumn, or read more about joining the network here: https://tinyurl.com/ycxmtmdr