Light pollution is an emerging public health hazard that has been linked to elevated risk of many diseases, including sleep disorders, cancer, cardiometabolic diseases, dementia and mental…

This federal contract award, valued at $238,468.00, was granted by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) to conduct research on light pollution and its public health implications. The project aims to develop data visualization and analysis tools, platforms to study the intersection of light pollution, demographics, and health statistics, and an education program to raise awareness and engage the community, particularly in the Little Village neighborhood of Chicago which experiences disproportionately high levels of light pollution. This award is not a set-aside contract. UTHealth is the prime contractor and has previously received federal grants and contracts from agencies such as the National Institutes of Health, Department of Veterans Affairs, and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to perform biomedical research and clinical studies. The project supports NASA's mission to advance scientific understanding and promote public health.

Light pollution is an emerging public health hazard that has been linked to elevated risk of many diseases, including sleep disorders, cancer, cardiometabolic diseases, dementia and mental disorders. Moreover, light pollution is also an important environmental justice issue. IT has been shown that marginalized communities have a disproportionately high burden of artificial light at night (alan), and are more susceptible to develope adverse health effects related to alan. Among american cities, chicago not only has one of the highest levels of light pollution, but also displays profound injustice in light pollution. The little village neighborhood in chicago, a predominantly mexican immigrant community, exemplifies the dual burden of high levels of light pollution and social vulnerability. Thanks to years of collaborative work with our community partners, there is now growing awareness about light pollution and its detrimental effects among the little village residents. In addition, the community members expressed pressing needs in learning more about light pollution in their neighborhood and taking actions to promote appropriate lighting and mitigate adverse health effects. In particular, there are critical needs for 1) an interface that provide high quality data and visualization and analysis tools to characterize the burden of alan 2) a platform that crosslinks alan measures with demographic and socioeconomic indicators and health statistics to demonstrate the scale of light pollution injustice and highlight its public health implications and 3) an expanded education program that teach students about light pollution and its consequences and cultivate next-generation activists to take data-informed actions.