Omenn Lecture in Environmental Health

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Dr. Howard Frumkin will deliver the 2026 Omenn Lecture, "The nature of environmental health."

Join the DEOHS community for the 2026 Omenn Lecture in Environmental Health, featuring Howard Frumkin, professor emeritus in UW DEOHS and former dean in the UW School of Public Health. A student poster session and reception will precede the lecture.

About Howard Frumkin

Howard Frumkin, a general internist and epidemiologist, is professor emeritus at the University of Washington School of Public Health. His career has focused on health aspects of climate change, the built environment, nature contact and sustainability. He has served as senior vice president at Trust for Public Land; head of the Our Planet, Our Health initiative at the Wellcome Trust in London; dean of the University of Washington School of Public Health; director of the National Center for Environmental Health and Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry at the CDC; and professor and chair of environmental and occupational health, and professor of medicine, at Emory University.

His current community and professional activities include serving on the Board of the Seattle Parks Foundation, on the Executive Committee of the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, as lead author on the health chapter of The Nature Record, as chair of the National Academy of Medicine Committee on the Roadmap for Transformative Action to Achieve Health for All at Net-Zero Emissions, on the Steering Committee of the Planetary Health Alliance, and on advisory committees to the Global Consortium on Climate and Health Education (Columbia University), the Harvard Center on Climate, Health, and the Global Environment, the Yale Center on Climate Change and Health, and the Medical Society Consortium on Climate & Health (George Mason University). He previously served on the Boards of the Washington State Academy of Sciences, the Bullitt Foundation, the U.S. Green Building Council, Physicians for Social Responsibility, the American Public Health Association and the National Environmental Education Foundation. He is author or co-author of more than 300 scientific journal articles and chapters, and his ten books include Making Healthy Places: Designing and Building for Health, Well-Being, and Sustainability (2nd Edition, 2022), Environmental Health: From Global to Local (4th edition, forthcoming 2026), Planetary Health: Protecting Nature to Protect Ourselves (2020), and Planetary Health: Safeguarding Human Health and the Environment in the Anthropocene (2021). He was educated at Brown (A.B.), the University of Pennsylvania (M.D.), and Harvard (M.P.H. and Dr.P.H.). He is an elected member of the Washington State Academy of Sciences and of the National Academy of Medicine. He is married to health journalist Joanne Silberner and has two children, Gabe, a labor lawyer, and Amara, a pediatrician.

The Omenn Lecture