Throughout EPA’s history Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health has supported the agency’s work with research into the public health impacts from many environmental factors, but as climate change becomes an overriding concern the school is ramping up its focus on that issue to inform greenhouse gas policy options.
“Our mission is to put science into action -- to leverage the astounding expertise in public health research at the school and at this university, and put it in the hands of people who need it,” says Ari Bernstein, currently the co-chair of the school’s Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment (C-CHANGE) and slated to become its solo head after co-chair Gina McCarthy departs to lead the Natural Resources Defense Council in 2020.
Ari Bernstein
The climate center is just one of seven major environmental research centers established within the school of public health since its 1963 founding. Douglas Dockery, a former chair of the center for environmental health sciences operated in partnership with the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), in an interview with Environment Next, describes climate work as “a tiny, tiny piece of what is going on at the department."
But C-CHANGE has become a prominent part of the school’s public face, as it delves into both regulatory matters like the most effective ways to deploy renewable energy, and public facing ones meant to raise the profile of climate change risks and harms among the general public.
While the Trump administration is either loosening or rescinding most federal climate rules, new research is still aiding state and local efforts to either enact or preserve climate policies at those levels, Bernstein tells Environment Next.
For instance, the center’s research on renewable deployment “was a major part of the conversation about whether states like Ohio should do renewable energy, and that can be very important since there’s constant pressure in Ohio to repeal the state’s renewable portfolio standard,” he says.
Douglas Dockery
Meanwhile, the center’s leadership hopes its public work will help show the broader public-health benefits of cutting greenhouse gases, and in the process build support for those measures.
“There’s lots of evidence to suggest that in the conversation around climate change in the United States, when people understand that taking action on greenhouse gases aren’t just about protecting polar bears, or people in other countries . . . the conversation gets away from partisan bickering and into ‘why wouldn’t we do this anyway? We’d be fools,’” Bernstein says.
To achieve that goal, the center has broadened its focus beyond the already vast range of direct physical impacts from climate change, like sea level rise and extreme weather, to down-the-line effects such as mental health harms to people who suffer through those disasters.
“There’s pretty much no issue it doesn’t touch upon,” he says. “People who live through natural disasters have higher rates of mental health disorders. And as far as that’s concerned, there’s never been quite the same challenge to mental health as with climate change. Maybe the closest is nuclear war, when children were told to run under their desks . . . but at least that had some concreteness to it."
By contrast, he says, the nebulous nature of climate change risk makes for a more open-ended threat that is difficult for the human mind to deal with because it is not tied to a particular event that can either happen and ultimately pass, or be averted entirely.
Broader Research
While Harvard’s climate-focused work is relatively recent, the public health school has been researching environmental issues since before EPA’s 1970 founding. For instance, the NEIHS center dates to 1963, “and we’ve been looking at air pollution over that whole time,” Dockery says.
He continues that the sheer breadth of the public health school, with over 500 faculty, graduate students and staff, allows them to bring a wide range of disciplines to bear on even a specialized problem. For instance, Dockery says, an examination of air pollutants can include their molecular genetic effects of air pollution, population exposure studies, policy evaluations and an overall risk assessment, among other approaches.
“That’s what’s fairly unique about our department -- we bring all the disciplines to bear on environmental health problems. . . . A major focus of the center is on reaching out and bringing in other departments, with expertise in social research, for instance."
Other active centers within the T.H. Chan School include the Education and Research Center for Occupational Safety and Health, which Dockery says works closely with the environmental centers on workplace-exposure issues; the Center for Risk Analysis; the John B. Little Center for Radiation Sciences; and the Center for Health Communication. A new center that will operate in partnership with EPA’s Superfund office is also preparing to start operations.
Beyond its own research, Bernstein says the instructors are focusing on producing graduates who can apply public-health and sustainability principles in a wide range of disciplines.
“A masters in public health degree -- that’s a practice degree, that’s not a research degree. So you have to prepare them to contribute in a practical sense,” Bernstein says. That includes former T.H. Chan students who have gone on to guide sustainable investing at major firms like Fannie Mae, and others who specialize in climate-friendly agriculture. “You have to be pretty creative as far as what are the opportunities for students."
“There are very few job postings in the world where the notice says ‘we’re looking for somebody who cares about climate change,’ so you have to find ways to show the value of someone who really understands climate and health to an agency.” -- David LaRoss (dlaross@iwpnews.com)
