Development of point-of-care mobile health technology to reduce heat and pesticides-induced farmworker health disparity

NIH RePORTER · NIH · R01 · $556,898 · view on reporter.nih.gov ↗

Abstract

Abstract Migrant and seasonal farmworkers (MSFWs) are predominantly Hispanic and continue to face serious health inequity and disparity in the United States. They are at high risk of developing acute and chronic diseases that can be caused by two top hazards at work: extreme heat and pesticides. underlying health conditions that may develop into chronic kidney disease (CKD) while pesticides exposure can lead to acute or chronic poisoning. The combination of heat and pesticides could exacerbate health conditions for farmworkers. Moreover, farmworkers have limited access to regular healthcare due to physical, economic, infrastructural, knowledge, and culture barriers, with the result being that sick farmworkers cannot get diagnosed and treated in a timely manner. All these may contribute to the short life expectancy (average of 49-years) of farmworkers. Thus, early detection and timely intervention is critical for farm workers to reduce the risk of developing various diseases caused by heat and pesticides. Extreme heat exposure can cause underlying Existing diagnostic assays for the detection of CKD and pesticides poisoning such as calorimetric creatinine assays and Ellman assays for measuring blood acetylcholinesterase (AChE) are generally performed in centralized laboratories, are expensive, and have a long turnaround time. Thus, there is a critical need to develop new point-of-care (POC) technologies and new approaches for farmworkers to overcome these barriers to get healthcare and health literacy and improve their quality of life. We have developed and validated an integrated smartphone/nanosensor device for onsite rapid and sensitive detection of personal exposure to pesticides using minimally-invasive finger stick blood, which was supported by an NIH NIEHS STTR grant (R41ES032388). In this proposal, we will expand this technology and develop a smartphone-based multiplex nanosensing platform and a health education app for farmworkers. The multiplex nanosensing platform can be applied for early and fast screening of pesticide exposure and kidney diseases using a tiny finger-stick blood for farmworkers. The health education app can be used by farmworkers to learn heat and pesticides-related health information. The long-term goal of this research is to reduce farmworker health disparity and improve farmworker health through providing farmworkers with inexpensive, efficient, and new mobile health technology for rapid home screening, point-of-care (POC) testing, and health education. We will have four aims. In aim 1, we will develop nanosensors for measuring creatinine and acetylcholinesterase activity; In aim 2, we will develop a multiplexing resistance meter with Bluetooth and evaluate the analytical performance of the multiplex nanosensing platform for simultaneously measuring creatinine and AChE using spiked blood samples; In aim 3, we will develop an app for the multiplex nanosensing platform and a health education app and associated cloud fo...

Key facts

NIH application ID
10770177
Project number
1R01EB035083-01
Recipient
UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA CHARLOTTE
Principal Investigator
Xiuxia Du
Activity code
R01
Funding institute
NIH
Fiscal year
2024
Award amount
$556,898
Award type
1
Project period
2024-03-07 → 2028-02-29