Health Equity

Dr. Jeremy Hess

As a young woman, Diana Ceballos spent Saturdays volunteering with impoverished children living in a neighborhood built on top of a garbage dump in her native Medellin, Colombia.

When Bruk Molla first came to the UW as an undergraduate, he was searching for the perfect premed major. He considered several options, but struggled to find exactly what he was looking for: a field with direct impact on people’s lives. Then he discovered the Environmental Health major in the Department of Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences (DEOHS).

Dr. Catherine Karr completed years of specialty training in pediatrics and can’t recall ever being taught about the issue of lead poisoning, which causes neurodevelopmental issues in children.

How many grams of feces does the average human excrete each day? That question—part of Erica Fuhrmeister’s first college research project as an undergraduate at Johns Hopkins University—might have sent some budding scientists running for the nearest liberal arts course.

Despite their invisibly small size, ultrafine particles have become a massive concern for air pollution experts. These tiny pollutants—typically spread through wildfire smoke, vehicle exhaust, industrial emissions and airplane fumes—can bypass some of the body’s built-in defenses, carrying toxins to every organ or burrowing deep in the lungs.

When most people think about the causes of diabetes and obesity, they think about diet, physical activity and family history. But when Joe Lim thinks about these diseases, he thinks about environmental toxicants that are often invisible to the senses yet can have an enormous impact decades into a person’s life.

Claire Schollaert PhD, Environmental & Occupational Hygiene Hometown Walnut Creek, CA Future plans A career as an environmental health scientist in academia, government or the nonprofit sector

Two teams of researchers from the UW Department of Environmental & Occupational Health Sciencs (DEOHS) and their partners recently received grants from the UW Population Health Initiative for projects focusing on supporting healthy home environments in Washington’s Yakima Valley and understanding the connections between community-based land management and disease outbreaks in Brazil.

In the early days of March 2020, Seattle-based anti-hunger nonprofit Northwest Harvest raided their food stores meant for as late as July to create boxes of shelf-stable food for vulnerable populations sheltering in place. Meanwhile, in every corner of the state, consumer habits were shifting.

Register now for Dr. Lynn Goldman's Apr. 20 talk: Cumulative Environmental Risk Impacts of Redlining: Houston as a Case Study As dean of the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University, Dr.

 

Affording food is such a challenge in Washington state that residents who experience food insecurity say their grocery bills are their biggest source of financial stress, more so than paying for rent or utilities.

Jennifer Otten, a faculty member and food systems scholar in the UW School of Public Health, has been appointed to the Washington State Food Policy Forum. The cross-sector group was formed by the Washington State Legislature in 2016 to make recommendations for improving food systems in the state.

2022 was a year of growth, change and global recognition for the UW Department of Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences (DEOHS), which secured top rankings in US News & World Report’s Best Global Universities 2022-2023 survey.  

Belen Salguero BS, Environmental Health Hometown Morton, WA Future plans A public health career focusing on worker health in marginalized communities

For Esther Min, the most effective public health science starts with listening to the needs of communities.

Greta Gunning BS, Environmental Health Hometown Seattle, WA Future plans A career as a public health scientist, likely at a public agency “It was great to see how prioritizing relationships could make a meaningful impact in public health.” - Greta Gunning

A new $2.3 million program funded by the US National Science Foundation will educate and equip young scientists to cultivate resilience to climate impacts such as flooding and extreme heat.

Two teams of researchers in the UW Department of Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences (DEOHS) and their partners have been awarded grants from the University of Washington Population Health Initiative to support research on the health impacts of wildfire smoke and extreme heat.

Register now for Joseph Allen's Nov. 3 talk: "Healthy Buildings: The Nexus of COVID, Climate and Worker Health" As director of Harvard’s Healthy Buildings Program, Joseph Allen often invites people to take their age and multiply it by 0.9.

“Have you ever been working in the field and been unable to see the sun because of smoke?” At a recent outreach event for farmworker families in Central Washington, participants were asked questions like this one about the challenges they face during wildfire smoke season, with an invitation to raise their hands when they agreed.

Claire Schollaert, PhD student in the UW Department of Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences (DEOHS), is one of two recipients of this year’s Russell L. Castner Endowed Student Research Fund, which supports student research in environmental health.

PNASH Director Michael Yost

Diana Marquez MS, Applied Occupational Hygiene Hometown Grandview, WA Future plans A career with Washington State Department of Labor & Industries “The most meaningful thing has been getting to change workers’ perspectives around the work we do in occupational health and safety.”

DEOHS Assistant Professor Nicole Errett How do you plan ahead for the unforeseen?

Since it launched in 2019, Washington’s Environmental Health Disparities Map has been used to help decision-makers and government agencies work with communities to clean up contamination, improve buildings and electric grids, plant trees and many other projects.

Communities in one of Washington’s most wildfire-prone regions share hard-earned wisdom about communicating the risks of wildfire smoke in a new report from a team of UW researchers, the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation and the Okanogan River Ai