Francine Laden, ScD, MS

Associate Professor of Medicine
Channing Division of Network Medicine
Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School

Professor of Environmental Epidemiology
Departments of Environmental Health and Epidemiology
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Dr. Francine Laden is Professor of Environmental Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and an Associate Professor of Medicine at the Harvard Medical School and the Brigham & Women's Hospital. Dr. Laden received her ScD in Epidemiology and MS in Environmental Health from the Harvard School of Public Health. Her research interests focus on the environmental epidemiology of chronic diseases, including cancer, respiratory and cardiovascular disease. Her research has or is concentrated on the following categories of exposures: air pollution (from ambient and occupational sources), persistent organic pollutants (POPs; organochlorines), secondhand smoke, and the contextual environment (e.g. built environment and green spaces). Dr. Laden is specifically interested in the geographic distribution of disease risk, incorporating geographic information system technology into large cohort studies to explore risk factors such as the built environment and indicators of socioeconomic status, as well as air pollution. She has published key papers on the association of ambient particulate matter and all cause and cardiovascular mortality in the Harvard Six Cities Study and the Nurses' Health Study and on the association of diesel exhaust exposures in the trucking industry with lung cancer mortality. She was Co-Director of the Harvard and Boston University Evironmental Disparities Center: Center for Research on Environmental and Social Stressors in Housing Across the Life Course (CRESSH). The mission of the Center was to study environmental health disparities in low-income communities and throughout Massachusetts. Dr. Laden is Past President of the International Society of Environmental Epidemiology and the Associate Chair of the Department of Environmental Health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.