Candidate: The candidate is a physician with a background in emergency medicine, currently training in occupational and environmental medicine. In the short term the candidate will obtain mentored experience conducting field research and will develop expertise in environmental asthma. Additionally the candidate will become proficient in biostatistics and environmental science methodologies through formal course-work and through field experience. In the long term the candidate intends to become an independent researcher in environmental epidemiology and to collaborate with medical and public health colleagues to improve the health of the public by preventing harmful environmental exposures, and also to improve our understanding of the mechanisms of asthma. Environment: The proposed training and research will be done at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health. The mentor and co- mentor of the proposed project have substantial expertise in air pollution monitoring, bio-aerosol sampling and analysis, inner-city asthma, asthma panel studies, time series analysis, and time-space cluster analysis. All of these fields of knowledge are important in environmental asthma research. The Center for Environmental Epidemiology is a forum for developing a broad understanding of leading-edge research and controversies. The faculty, laboratories and computing facilities of the School of Public Health will be available to the candidate. The School of Public Health, the Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, and the Division of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences actively support the development of the candidate as an independent researcher in environmental epidemiology. Research Project: Inner city residents living in public housing are at increased risk for asthma morbidity and mortality. Cities in the United States are demolishing public housing developments. This may increase local concentrations of airborne particulate matter. The impact of this on asthma severity has not been studied. The proposed project is a panel study that will evaluate the impact of housing demolition on asthma severity of nearby public housing residents. The exposure will be characterized by environmental sampling. Health effects studied will be asthma symptoms, peak expiratory flow rate, and exhaled nitric oxide, an indicator of pulmonary inflammation. In order to determine the health effects of the particulate matter exposure, potential confounders and effect modifiers such as ambient air pollutants, pollen counts, and meteorological factors will be considered in a time-series analysis.