Towards an Accessible Understanding of Providence’s Air Quality: 

Environmental Communication to Engage Broad Audiences

By Lily Lustig

In this semester-long capstone project, Lily helped develop Breathe Providence’s online communication strategy. In particular, she focused on how communication can be a means to further Breathe Providence’s environmental justice and community goals.

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Lily sought to translate Breathe Providence’s mission and findings into a language and form of media that was accessible to local stakeholders, policymakers, and scientists alike. A key aspect of this was illustrating the relevance of the data collected to the daily lives of Providence residents. She crafted Breathe Providence’s public-facing website to minimize scientific jargon and created a newsletter to keep in touch with broader audiences.

Lily then studied the engagement metrics for Breathe Providence’s online presence in an effort to maximize engagement with the project, effectively highlight the work of project partners, and raise awareness of broader issues.

To reach her intended audiences, Lily used MailChimp to create the community newsletter and Squarespace to build the project website. Key topics she researched, wrote about, and formatted included:

  • Literature on science communication for public audience

  • Background on sources and health impacts of common air pollutants

  • The state of air quality and monitoring in Rhode Island

  • Project links with community organizations and other partners

  • Efforts towards community building and shared understanding with partner organizations

  • Transcribed interviews with local community advocates, environmentalists, and health experts

Web accessibility and engagement measures Lily undertook include:

Breakdown of which pages on breatheprovidence.com received the most views between December 20, 2022 and April 2023. Pages studied include: Home Page, Data, Meet the Team, Our Monitors, and an interview by South Providence Neighborhood Association President Dwayne Keys.

  • Providing detailed alt text for all images

  • Ensuring sufficient color contrast between text and background

  • Balancing text and pictures

  • Noting that our newsletter can be translated into over 100 languages

Click rates for the March 2023 quarterly newsletter, in comparison to average non-profit newsletters’ performance.

Open rates for the March 2023 quarterly newsletter, in comparison to average non-profit newsletters’ performance. As of late April 2023, the newsletter had an audience of 45 people.