CCI professors receive NIH grant to develop mobile health technology

Jun Wang and Xiuxia Du, faculty members in the College of Computing and Informatics Department of Bioinformatics and Genomics, are principal investigators for an R01 grant to develop point-of-care mobile health technology to reduce heat and pesticide-induced farmworker health disparities.

The $2.1 million grant, awarded by the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, is the first major award received by the University’s Ignite Center for Environmental Monitoring and Informatics Technologies for Public Health since its establishment in July 2023. 

According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, heat-related illness for farmworkers is at a rate of 20 times greater than for the rest of U.S. civilian workers. From 1992 to 2017, excessive heat exposure killed more than 800 farmworkers and seriously injured 70,000-plus. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that each year farmworkers suffer up to 300,000 acute illnesses and injuries from exposures to pesticides.

“Currently available technologies for farmworkers to monitor their health issues caused by heat and pesticides are too expensive and take a long time to get results. We want to develop a rapid and affordable point-of care mobile health technology for farmworkers,” said Wang. “It will allow them not only to rapidly monitor the health issues but also to learn heat and pesticide-related health information. If successful, such devices would greatly protect them from exposure to heat and pesticides.”

Wang and Du aim to develop a smartphone-based multiplex nano-sensing platform and a health education app for farmworkers. The multiplex nano-sensing platform is intended to allow for earlier and faster screening of pesticide exposure and kidney diseases using a tiny finger-stick of blood for farmworkers.

The health education app is being designed for farmworkers to learn heat and pesticides-related health information. These technologies will be developed at UNC Charlotte will develop these technologies, which will be validated through collaboration with the Farmworker Association of Florida Inc., a grassroots statewide organization that works closely with farmworkers on their well-being.