www.epa.gov – 19-05-2022
When smoky conditions from wildfires last for days, weeks or months, communities have begun to seek advice on how to develop formal plans to reduce the public health threat.

Reducing exposure is important for everyone’s health — especially those more vulnerable, such as children, older adults, and people with heart or lung disease. Other communities may be impacted by seasonal prescribed burning for land management purposes, which can also cause smoke-related health concerns.
EPA researchers have identified a need to study the characteristics, elements, networks, relationships, and processes that contribute to an effective smoke-ready plan to protect public health. The study team is using a collaborative approach with partners to study the process of collaboration as well as influencing factors and early outcomes that may be related to this approach.
The research findings can be used by public health professionals, emergency response organizations, air quality managers and others to assist communities with developing a smoke-ready plan for smoke events.
Smoke-ready communities benefit public health by coordinating community-level action around indoor and outdoor air quality. They have evidence-based strategies in place to guide responses to wildfire smoke events. A range of preparedness activities may be appropriate and varies depending on the community's characteristics.
In addition, EPA and other federal agencies have developed resources to assist communities with becoming smoke ready. This includes the Wildfire Smoke: A Guide for Public Health Officials, which recommends that communities at risk for smoke events assess their  vulnerabilities in advance, plan for appropriate responses, take action during a fire, and incorporate lessons learned from past smoke events into future response efforts.
Research Project
EPA is conducting the Smoke-Ready Communities Research Project with county level public and environmental health department partners to support the development of effective plans for preparing for wildfires and prescribed burning. The objectives are:
* Support county partners in their efforts to increase public health readiness for wildland fire smoke events through a collaborative approach to creating a local smoke response plan
* Contribute to empirical evidence that can inform broader guidance for local leaders on developing effective and comprehensive smoke response communication plans
* Provide insights on how existing tools and resources that aim to support local readiness are used by local smoke teams
* Contribute to the knowledge base related to fire science, collaborative governance, community capacity, and community resilience
A smoke-ready community is prepared and empowered to provide its residents with evidence-based, locally relevant information during fire-related smoke events and recommend actions to reduce public health impacts from smoke. A range of preparedness activities may be appropriate, depending on the forecasted risk for wildfires, the frequency and severity of smoke impacts, the nature of the fire event (wildfire, prescribed fire, residential wood burning), underlying vulnerabilities of local populations, and other attributes of the community.
The Smoke-Ready Communities Research Project is a multidisciplinary and interagency collaboration led by EPA and the U.S. Forest Service. The project is built around a series of interactive workshops and is designed to increase local readiness and improved public health response to wildfire smoke events. Local teams learn about the issue and work collaboratively to create a public health smoke response plan for their community.  
Research Approach and Impacts
The research design for this pilot study integrates the principles of citizen science and community-based participatory research (CBPR). This type of research brings together researchers and communities to collaborate on the study objectives with active engagement and participation by community leaders and organizations throughout the process. Researchers will provide a scientific approach to develop local wildland fire response plans with each county partner following recommendations in the Wildfire Smoke: A Guide for Public Health Officials. The approach to each partnership will be customized based on the county’s identified interests, needs and capacity to engage.
Specifically, the partnership includes efforts to:
* Support county leaders in establishing a local smoke team
* Foster relationships among team members as well as among the team and other local stakeholders through a series of monthly meetings and related interim activities
* Increase issue awareness and engagement through a series of educational workshops that cover a range of topics related to local public health readiness and resilience for wildland smoke
* Create a wildland fire public health response plan that is county-specific
* Collect research data on the local response planning process
* Potentially collaborate on future community-engaged research.
The research project is underway and will be conducted through Fall 2022. Results will be shared with community partners and published in the scientific literature. The case studies of how each county approached the more formal process of developing smoke-ready plans for their communities can provide examples for what format other counties, cities, and towns could adopt to prepare for smoke events.