Climate Change

Two 2019 graduates of the UW Department of Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences (DEOHS) won awards this month at a student research competition held by the Association of Environmental Health Academic Programs.

Washington is on the road to 100 percent clean energy with the passage of a new law championed by Gov. Jay Inslee that sets targets for achieving zero-carbon electricity by 2045.

Trees are one of our best allies in combating climate change, capturing greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and preventing them from accumulating in the atmosphere.

  Can you solve this medical mystery? A New York woman returned home from a Florida vacation with a fever, headache and chills. Despite treatment, her condition worsened, and she eventually developed severe joint pain and a rash across her body.

Annie Doubleday MPH, Environmental and Occupational Health Hometown Shoreline, WA Future plans Working on air pollution and climate change issues at the state or local level.

Kholood Altassan PhD, Environmental and Occupational Hygiene Hometown Riyadh, Saudi Arabia Future plans Assistant professor at King Saud University, Saudi Arabia.

Sea-level rise associated with climate change is already displacing some small indigenous communities, and many others are at risk around the world.

US health care systems should extend their commitment to “do no harm” by ensuring that their own operations are powered by renewable energy, according to a new brief on climate change and health in the United States.

Building back better DEOHS researcher Nicole Errett discusses how communities can build back better after a disaster at a free public lecture on Thursday, Nov. 15, at 12:30 pm in room T-435 of the Magnuson Health Sciences Building at the UW.

The Pacific Northwest’s “new normal” is starting to feel like old normal in Washington’s Methow Valley. This is the fifth summer in a row that wildfire season has hit the Methow Valley especially hard, causing hazardous smoke conditions that persist for weeks and leaving residents feeling trapped and isolated.

Dr. Russ Castner is helping to improve human health—one graduate student at a time. The retired Shoreline dentist never got the chance to use the environmental health degree he earned as one of the first graduates of the UW School of Public Health.

Miriam CalkinsPhD, Environmental and Occupational HygieneHometownHarvard, MassachusettsFuture plansAssociate Service Fellow, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health

John Ji is an environmental epidemiologist researching the intersection of human health, environmental challenges and climate change. Ji has explored how exposures such as air pollution, urban green spaces and extreme heat affect public health, with a particular emphasis on the elderly and vulnerable populations.

Marissa Childs's research explores how large-scale environmental changes — like climate change and land use change — affect human health. Her work uses remote sensing and modeling to quantify nonlinear and context-dependent effects of environmental change.

Christine Loftus is an environmental epidemiologist with over 15 years of research experience in prenatal and early-life exposures to chemical and nonchemical stressors associated with child health trajectories. She also studies the factors that may modify these relationships, such as prenatal nutrition or psychosocial stress.

Jamie Donatuto is an environmental social scientist who has had the honor to work with communities, particularly Indigenous communities, for more than two decades.

Dr. Tzu-Hsin Karen Chen is an assistant professor in DEOHS, the Department of Urban Design and Planning, and the Data Science program. She studies large-scale urban environmental change and its implications for public health and health inequality.

Joan A. Casey received her doctoral degree from the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in 2014. Dr. Casey is an environmental epidemiologist who focuses on environmental health, environmental justice, and sustainability.

Resham Patel is an assistant teaching professor at the University of Washington, with 15 years of local and national experience as a public health professional. She serves as the Director of Practitioner Engagement for the UW Center for Disaster Resilient Communities (CDRC).

Esther Min (she/her) is a Clinical Assistant Professor at the Department of Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences, School of Public Health, University of Washington. She is also part of the Northwest Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Unit (PEHSU).

Dr. Burkhart is a geographer and climate scientist and is an Assistant Professor of Health Metrics Sciences at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington. In this role, she works on the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) project, conducting research on environmental risks and methods to include exposure to suboptimal temperature. Dr.

Karen Levy is Professor in the UW Department of Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences (DEOHS). She studies the ecology and epidemiology of environmentally-mediated infectious diseases.

Dr. Sarah Collier is an Assistant Professor in Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences and core faculty in the Food Systems, Nutrition, and Health Program.

Heidi is a climate scientist with a passion for science and communication. She is currently Lead Scientist for Science Communication with the UW Climate Impacts Group and an Affiliate Assistant Professor in the UW Department of Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences.

Andrew L. Dannenberg, MD, MPH, is an Affiliate Professor in the Department of Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences and in the Department of Urban Design and Planning at the University of Washington, where he teaches courses on health and built environment and on health impact assessment.

Dr. Patricia Cirone retired from the U.S. Environmental Protection, Region 10 (USEPA) in 2006 where she served as the Chief of the Risk Evaluation Unit for over 20 years. Since retiring Dr. Cirone has been an Affiliate Professor at the University of Washington, Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences and a consultant with Ridolfi, Inc.

Alison Cullen joined the Evans School faculty at University of Washington in 1995. Her research involves the analysis of risks to human health and the environment, decision making in the face of risks which are uncertain or vary across populations, and the application of value of information and distributional techniques. 

Sverre Vedal is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences at the University of Washington (UW) School of Public Health. He  is a pulmonary physician and an epidemiologist with research interests in the adverse health effects of community air pollution and in occupational lung disease.

The general area of my teaching and research involves the applied aspects of environmental health practice, i.e., how the principles and concepts of environmental health are actually practiced in the field, especially by local, state, tribal and federal agencies.

Howard Frumkin is professor emeritus of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences at the University of Washington School of Public Health, where he served as dean from 2010-2016. He led the “Our Planet, Our Health” initiative at the Wellcome Trust in London from 2018-2019.