Podcast – Rosie McEachan, Director at Born in Bradford

Having spent years educating the public on healthy living, Born In Bradford played an instrumental role in securing support for a new Clean Air Zone. Our latest podcast explains how. 

In this month’s Air Quality News Podcast we look at an area that is central to the effective implementation of a Clean Air Zone. There are a number of Clean Air Zones operational now, with more in the pipeline. However, community engagement is a key part of getting this right for any Council.

The Bradford Clean Air Zone went live on 26 September 2022 but enjoyed exceptionally high levels of public support (in the region of 75%). This is an impressive result compared with other areas, such as Manchester.

So how did Bradford achieve this? Our interviewee is Professor Rosie McEchan, who is Director of the ‘Born in Bradford’ initiative and she explains how they supported the Council in this important work.

Born in Bradford is not about air quality per se. It is a birth cohort study that was set up over 10 years ago and monitors over 12,000 households and 13,000 children. Its purpose is to help push the boundaries of medical science by monitoring the subjects through their early lives and more generally through their families.

This meant that the Council had a willing partner to assist with the engagement process, and one that both had considerable relevant medical data on the community and strongly supported the notion of the Clean Air Zone.

As a result, it was possible to take a detailed survey of the group and therefore provide a very accurate view of what people in Bradford thought of the Clean Air Zone and help shape the proposals. Rosie explains this enthusiastically in the Podcast.

As it happens, Born in Bradford has also given the Council – and Government – another benefit. As a separate strand of its work (titled Born in Bradford Breathes) it has agreed to monitor its subjects for air quality both before and after the Clean Air Zone becomes live.

As such it will provide in depth analysis of the actual impact of the Zone, which will be of use, not just to the Council but to other local authorities too and also the Government in helping shape future policy. This aspect of the work will be the subject of a follow up article for Air Quality News later this month.

Listen to the latest episode of Air Quality News‘ podcast series below.