Chair: Douglas Dockery

(ddockery@hsph.harvard.edu)
617-432-0729

Administrator: Kenneth Wenger
(kwenger@hsph.harvard.edu)
617-432-3483

FACTS:

The Department has 86 students, including 52 doctoral candidates, 26 Master of Science candidates and 6 Master of Public Health candidates. We also have approximately 95 post-doctoral fellows and visiting scientists.

• Students represent 18 nations; 48% of degree candidates are foreign nationals.
• The Department has 31 primary faculty members; 12 faculty members have tenure.
• The Department offers 55 regular courses and 12 continuing education courses.
• The Department's environmental outreach includes work with New England area schools, communities, workers, unions, and corporations.
• Collaborative environmental and occupational health studies are taking place in Argentina, Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Cyprus, Germany, Greece, India, Japan, Kuwait, Mexico, the Netherlands, the Republic of Korea, Russia, Switzerland, and Taiwan.
• The Department has 2 endowed senior professorships: 1) the Cecil K. and Philip Drinker Professorship; and 2) the Akira Yamaguchi Professorship in Environmental Health and Human Habitation. There are also two endowed junior chairs, the Mark and Catherine Winkler Assistant/Associate Professors of Environmental Health.
• In 2006 we have 38 new students, including 14 Doctoral candidates, 18 Master of Science candidates, 5 Master of Public Health (OEH) and 1 non degree student. By program, there are 23 new students in EER, 13 in OHP, and 2 in MIPS.

The following is a breakdown of the students by region and country:

• North America: USA 52, Canada 2, Mexico 1
• Asia: PRC 6, Taiwan 5, Korea 4, Japan 1
• Mediterranean: Greece 2, Israel 1, Lebanon 1, Cyprus 1
• Southeast Asia: India 3, Philippines 1, Thailand 1
• Other: United Kingdom 1, Columbia 2, Ghana 1, Brazil 1

BUDGET:

The Department excels at competing for federal funds, mostly from the National Institutes of Health. In FY2005, funding for sponsored research in the Department was about $35 million.

MISSION STATEMENT:

The Department of Environmental Health believes that the essence of public health is the primary prevention of disease through global leadership in research, training, and service. We seek to:

• Attract and retain a distinguished faculty committed to environmental research from a wide range of fields, such as chemistry, physiology, genetics, cell and molecular biology, medicine, engineering, epidemiology, occupational health, preventive medicine, and risk management.
• Offer the most advanced training to the best degree candidates and fellows, both domestic and international.
• Perform research that ranges from the molecular to the population levels and will utilize a diversity of appropriate technologies. We seek an understanding of the pathogenesis and prevention of environmentally-produced illnesses that will act as a catalyst for scientifically-based public health advances and regulation.
• Seek colleagues and collaborations throughout the School, University, and the world to maximize the Department's resources and impact.

IMPLEMENTATION STRATEGY:

The expertise of the faculty, students, and staff give the Department of Environmental Health the capability to address complex environmental problems and to provide training at 5 critical levels:

• Exposure assessment research answers questions such as: What concentrations of toxins are present in air, water, and food? What activities and circumstances are associated with the highest exposures? What is the relationship between exposure to a toxin and the biologically relevant dose a person receives?
• Epidemiologic studies define the connections of environmental exposures and genetic susceptibility with resulting responses, disease, and death.
• Molecular, cellular, and physiological studies reveal how pollutants affect the body and provide mechanistic explanations for environmental diseases.
• Risk analysis integrates scientific findings to help create sound environmental and occupational health policies.
• Risk management and control seek to apply practical, cost-effective strategies to prevent pollution and reduce environmental and occupational health hazards in cooperation with government, industry, workers, and communities.