Centers and Working Groups

Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment (C-CHANGE)

C-CHANGE harnesses the best available science and supports innovative research to advance plans, policies, technologies, and products that benefit public health today while providing sound opportunities to stabilize our climate.  In short, we build momentum for broad, bold actions by focusing on what matters to each one of us: our children, our family, our community, our country, and our world.  We transform science into meaningful actions people can and will embrace to deliver a healthier, more just, and sustainable future.

Harvard Chan-NIEHS Center for Environmental Health

The Harvard Chan-NIEHS Center serves as the focus for environmental health research and training activities in the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and elsewhere at Harvard University. The Center was established in 1958 to promote interactions among physicians, biological scientists, physical scientists, and engineers working on environmental problems that influence human health.

Harvard Education and Research Center

The objective of the Education and Research Center is to give occupational safety and health professionals the opportunity to develop public health perspectives, a sensitivity about political climates, and the skills and knowledge needed to identify and prevent occupational impairments, disease, and injuries through control or elimination of harmful occupational exposures.

John B. Little (JBL) Center for Radiation Sciences

The JBL Center will support cutting-edge biological, physical and population-based epidemiological research to understand, interpret, and estimate the health effects of radiation that should pave the way for effective preventive and therapeutic strategies. A primary focus will be on understanding fundamental interactions of ionizing radiation, especially low dose levels of radiation, with molecules, cells, and organisms.

Center for Research on Environmental and Social Stressors in Housing Across the Life Course (CRESSH)

CRESSH involves investigators from multiple academic and community organizations, including the Boston University School of Public Health, the Boston University School of Medicine, the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, GreenRoots, Children’s HealthWatch, and Health Resources in Action. We believe strongly that environmental health disparities can only be understood, reduced and ultimately prevented through transdisciplinary research and multi-stakeholder partnerships.

University of Rhode Island/Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health STEEP Superfund Center

With support from the Superfund Research Program (SRP) at NIEHS, a new center has been established to better understand human exposures and health risks posed by an important new class of environmental contaminants: poly- and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs). The SRP Center is led by the University of Rhode Island (URI) and co-directed by EH faculty member, Philippe Grandjean. STEEP (Sources, Transport, Exposure & Effects of PFASs) includes research projects on environmental fate and transport being led by EH faculty member Elsie Sunderland and a project on childhood risk led by Philippe Grandjean.

Exposure Biology Working Group

The Exposure Biology Working Group focuses on the development and application of quantitative tools to study the relationship among exposure, dose, and response. The group consists of students, postdoctoral fellows, faculty, and researchers from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School. New members from various departments and centers are welcome to join in the eclectic mix of discussions.

Contact David Kim for information.  You can also look at the Group’s website.

Environmental Statistics Working Group

This seminar focuses on statistical issues related to assessing environmental effects on human health and analyzing environmental data in general. Specific areas of interest include air pollution epidemiology, exposure assessment, teratology, fertility and reproduction, respiratory studies, and community-based research as well as general topics such as errors-in-variables models, missing data methods, hierarchical modeling, smoothing, and methods for correlated data such as longitudinal and spatial data analysis. The seminars are generally pitched at a level that encourages student participation. Students interested in receiving credit for attending the seminars may sign up with individual faculty members for some guided readings on a special topic.

Contact Amanda King for information.

 Metals Epidemiology Research Group

The Mission of the Harvard-Michigan/Michigan-Harvard Metals Epidemiology Research Group (MERG) is to gain new insights into the impacts of exposure to potentially toxic metals that are of critical importance to public health and medicine by applying multi-disciplinary and novel methods of exposure assessment, genetics, nutrition, psychosocial factors and clinical measurements in epidemiologic studies of human populations around the world.

Contact Marc Weisskopf, Sung Kyun Park, Karen Peterson, or Brisa Sanchez