Harvard was planning to distribute 100 air conditioners to Boston residents. Then came the Trump funding freeze.
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One hundred Boston residents were supposed to receive a window unit as early as June as part of a Harvard University study of making air conditioning more widely accessible, especially to those with medical conditions, as summers grow hotter and more humid.
But as part of its far-reaching assault on the university, the Trump administration rescinded the money for the project. As a result, some residents, including Brown, received their units late, while others won't get them at all.
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'It really breaks my heart that yesterday was the day that folks could have really benefited from already having an air conditioner,' Gary Adamkiewicz, the project's leader and an associate professor of environmental health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said in June, one day after temperatures hit 102 degrees. 'I was praying that the first heatwave in Boston would hold off until mid-July.'
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As the Trump administration erased $3 billion in federal funding to Harvard this year as punishment for what it calls liberal bias and an alleged failure to protect Jewish students from antisemitism, the public health school was especially hard hit. The school depends on the federal government for 40 percent of its budget, and Washington's actions have upended the work of researchers, slowing or stopping projects that reach into the day-to-day lives of Americans trying to improve their situation in the most basic ways.
'People think of research as this ivory tower thing, just to learn for the sake of learning,' said Jonathan Levy, chair of the environmental health department at the Boston University School of Public Health, who was not involved in the Harvard study. 'But these are practical projects to help the most vulnerable in society.'
Harvard has sued the Trump administration over the funding cuts, and a decision in the case is pending after oral arguments last week. Should the decision favor Harvard, the Trump administration likely will appeal.
Other studies focused on the health of Bostonians were also hit. Dr. Mary Rice, a pulmonologist and director of the public health school's Center for Climate Health, and the Global Environment lost $750,000 for the final year of a five-year grant to study Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, or COPD. She enrolled 180 residents in the Boston area with COPD in a randomized clinical trial testing whether air purifiers protect them from harmful pollution, which can cause fatal asthma-like attacks in people with the illness.
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The elaborate project included installing real air purifiers in half the homes and sham ones in the other half to allow for a robust comparison. Rice was not going to give up easily. She raised enough through bridge grants offered by
Harvard to finish the study, but still does not have enough money to analyze blood and nasal fluid samples from participants to look for biomarkers of pollution exposure and inflammatory responses.
She will store the samples in a freezer while she tries to raise additional funds. 'I have put so much energy into this study,' she said. 'I am trying to find a way.'
Adamkiewicz's air conditioner study was part of a $3.75-million three-year grant that also included two other heat-related projects. The plan is for half of the participants to get air conditioning units this summer and half next summer, allowing researchers to compare the two groups. Participants, who must be ages 55 to 95, will fill out questionnaires about their health, documenting symptoms and doctors visits, and sensors will record
the temperature and humidity in their homes.
After several delays, Adamkiewicz scraped together enough money to move forward with a scaled back version of the project for 60 city residents, some of whom live in public housing, others in private residences.
But the two other heat-related projects were canceled entirely: one to paint the roofs of 32 homes in South Africa white to see if that lowers indoor temperatures and improves residents' health; the second in Madagascar to open cooling centers that include freezers for fish, a diet staple that spoils faster in extreme temperatures.
Given Boston's older housing stock, many people live without central air conditioning, and that is especially true for subsidized housing, most of which was built between the 1930s and 1960s. Of the roughly 10,000 units owned by the Boston Housing Authority, just 250 have ductless mini-splits that provide heating and cooling.
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Brian Jordan, spokesman for the BHA, said Mayor Wu's administration is moving to install mini-splits in units as it upgrades properties over time. But this costly undertaking will take years. Meanwhile, he said, all the agency's developments for the elderly and the disabled have air-conditioned community rooms.
Residents are responsible for buying their own window units. Jordan said the agency doesn't track how many residents have air conditioners, but said the vast majority do. Brown, who lives the Franklin Fields complex, said some of his neighbors do not have air conditioning
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Lawrence Brown's window unit.
David L Ryan/ Globe Staff
'Some people are suffering,' said Brown, wiping his forehead with a t-shirt as he sat in a nearby park, the day before his unit was installed.
Brown said he could not afford to buy his own air conditioner and that he has dealt with high temperatures by taking four or five showers a day, staying with his girlfriend in her air-conditioned apartment, and wading in the ocean near Savin Hill Park. Brown, who has COPD, uses his inhaler more often in extreme heat.
'There are times when I feel like I'm suffocating,' he said. 'I can't breathe, so I would try to come outside where maybe there was a cool breeze or something.'
At the Boston Housing Authority's Heritage development in East Boston, many of the elderly and disabled residents cannot afford air conditioning units, said Adam Amodeo, whose 68-year-old uncle lives there. 'It boils down to how much money you have,' he said.
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Affordability is a key aspect of Adamkiewicz's study. Those who get their units this year and live in private housing will receive a $100 subsidy for electricity; next summer there will be no subsidy. Public housing residents don't pay for their own electricity. Researchers plan to compare air conditioner use among the different groups to see if the cost of electricity is an obstacle, or whether the cost and difficult installation is the main problem.
'We're trying to build the knowledge base so we could do something bigger going forward,' Adamkiewicz said.
On July 17, Brown became one of the lucky residents to receive a window air conditioning unit in his apartment But 40 other vulnerable residents will have lost the chance to join the study.
On Monday, another hot, humid day, Brown was asked how he was doing in his newly outfitted apartment. 'Are you kidding me?' he replied. 'I am in Disney Land.'
Globe correspondent Jade Lozada contributed reporting.
Liz Kowalczyk can be reached at
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