Health Equity

DEOHS research scientist Rachel Wood. Photo: Courtesy of Wood. Rachel Wood is looking for TB’s missing millions.

When University of Washington researchers discovered high rates of air pollution and childhood asthma in communities near Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, the next step became urgently clear — how to help.

The vast majority of earthquakes strike inside the Ring of Fire, a string of volcanoes and tectonic activity that wraps around the coastlines of the Pacific Ocean. But when an earthquake hits, the areas that experience the strongest shaking aren’t always the places that suffer the greatest damage.

DEOHS Assistant Professor Diana Ceballos. “Get home safe” is one of the most commonly stated goals in worker health and safety.

This new year comes with four new faculty for the UW Department of Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences (DEOHS).They bring expertise in addressing how emerging environmental exposures and social disparities influence a broad range of health concerns, including Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, fertility, birth outcomes, vector-borne disease and microbial exposure.

This summer, I embraced the UW EarthLab’s mission to “push the boundaries” as an EarthLab intern with the Center for Health and the Global Environment (CHanGE).

Maegan ChuaBS in Environmental Public HealthHometownKetchikan, AKInternship with:Public Health – Seattle & King County

Professor Lianne Sheppard’s bio recently grew a bit longer as she added a new title to her name. As of Sept. 1, 2024, Sheppard is the interim chair of the UW Department of Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences (DEOHS).  

At the end of this month, Michael Yost will be stepping down after a 10-year term as chair of the UW Department of Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences (DEOHS).

In June, 30 new faculty members at the UW took a five-day, 1,000-mile-plus bus tour around Washington state to get to know the state’s diverse landscape and people, as well as their new colleagues.  

Nell ThompsonBS, Environmental Public HealthHometownLynnwood, WAFuture plansGetting a master's of public health.“The learning opportunities I've had at UW have been really inspiring.”- Nell Thompson

Migration to King County has grown over the years, in part due to the boom of the tech sector. As housing prices have risen, public health researchers want to know how this has affected internal displacement within the county, especially for low-income households.

Kathleen Moloney, DEOHS research scientist. As unprecedented as the outbreak of COVID-19 felt, it was far from the first time a deadly disease has swept the globe. 

 

Researchers using a novel method of measuring long-term wildfire smoke exposure have found that Indigenous communities in California are exposed to disproportionate amounts of dangerous particulate matter—sometimes far beyond what has been previously known.

A new rule passed by the US Environmental Protection Agency this month will prevent thousands of premature deaths each year. The rule strengthens the national air quality standard for industrial emissions of fine particles, often called soot, as part of the Clean Air Act.

If you’re pregnant, you may want to think twice before making a hamburger run or reaching for a prepackaged pastry, according to research published last month in the journal Environmental International. 

Explore the storymap In the fall of 2022, our team of researchers from the Duwamish Valley Youth Corps, the Duwamish River Community Coalition (DRCC), the City of Seattle and the UW Department of Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences went door to door in the Se

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.

body.twentyThreeJobs .biobox{ background-color:#444444; color:white; } body.twentyThreeJobs .biobox img{ width:180px; margin:auto; } body.twentyThreeJobs .biobox h3{ border-top: 1px solid #00FF36; } body.twentyThreeJobs .biobox h4, body.twentyThreeJobs .biobox h5, body.twentyThreeJobs .biobox p, body.twentyThreeJobs .biobox .smbtn{ color:white; }

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.