in New Haven. Of course, this data gap is often a major challenge in other urban areas as well. Although there was strong local cooperation and local, state, and federal interest in working with the project, better research access to locally relevant health data should be both facilitated and encouraged. Given that the 2010 census has recently been collected and the air quality modeling for 2010 can be performed soon, we hope that the methodology we tested can be implemented in the near future using the actual 2010 local air quality modeling, census, and health data, in order to evaluate the results obtained from this feasibility study by using better databases and more robust models. Bolstered by the findings from our study, the City of New Haven has been work- ing to find better solutions for reducing air pollution burden and for understanding the impacts from air emissions. We presented the results from this analysis to the New Haven departments of Health, City Planning, and Economic Development and to the city chief executive officer. These results have been used by New Haven in finalizing their negotiations to obtain zero emissions from a proposed new power plant unit to meet peak demand opera- tions, which will be achieved through offsets by the local power plant company and pro- posed retrofits of garbage trucks and some port operations and additional community benefits. Moreover, the city is also evaluating what can be done to reduce impacts from port opera- tions and mitigate exposures at city schools located near busy roads and highways, in light of the detailed air quality modeling results and health risk evaluations presented here. Conclusions In this project we successfully applied, com- pared, and evaluated exposure assessment and epidemiological modeling tools in the context of observed public health status in a relatively small community, New Haven, Connecticut, and provided the U.S. EPA and local, state, and city organizations with a new modeling- based methodology to measure the impact of collective risk mitigation approaches and regulations. Furthermore, because no single regulation or program that affects air quality can be isolated to track its effect on health, this project provided critical findings on how regulatory agencies may better examine the complex interactions of cumulative impacts on air quality and health effects from multiple actions in other urban communities. Ref Rencs Burnett RT, Bartlett S, Jessiman B, Blagden P, Samson PR, Cakmak S, et al. 2005. Measuring progress in the manage- ment of ambient air quality: the case for population health. 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