19th James Whittenberger Lecture, Speaker: John R. Balmes, M.D.

19th James E. Whittenberger Lecture

John R. Balmes, M.D.
Professor of Medicine
University of California San Francisco

and

Director, Joint Medical Program
Professor of Environmental Health Science
University of California Berkeley’s School of Public Health

TITLE: Research to Regulation: a Physician-Scientist’s Search for Health Equity in Air Quality and Climate Change

Dr. John Balmes received his MD degree from Mount Sinai School of Medicine in 1976. After internal medicine training at Mount Sinai and pulmonary subspecialty, occupational medicine, and research training at Yale, he joined the faculty of USC in 1982. He joined the faculty at UCSF in 1986 and is currently Professor in the Divisions of Occupational and Environmental Medicine and Pulmonary/Critical Care Medicine at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital (ZSFG). Dr. Balmes is also Professor of Environmental Health Sciences at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health where he is one of leaders of the Children’s Health and Air Pollution Study (CHAPS) in Fresno, CA supported by a NIEHS/EPA Children’s Environmental Health Center grant; Director of the Northern CA Center for Occupational and Environmental Health, supported by a NIOSH Educational and Research Center grant; and Director of the UC Berkeley-UCSF Joint Medical Program, a unique medical education pathway.

Dr. Balmes has been studying the respiratory health effects of various air pollutants for the past 38 years. His research group was the first to demonstrate a) histological evidence of ozone-induced airway injury and inflammation in human subjects, b) that asthmatic subjects have greater inflammatory responses to ozone than normal subjects, c) that ozone-induced inflammatory responses in normal subjects attenuate with short-term exposures on consecutive days in the lung, and d) that asthmatic subjects recruit macrophages to the airways with consecutive day exposures. His group has also studied the acute cardiovascular responses after exposures to both ozone and secondhand tobacco smoke.

At UC Berkeley, Dr. Balmes has been collaborating on multiple epidemiological project: a) CHAPS to assess the impact of air pollution on immune and metabolic function of children living in Fresno; b) studies of the effects of biomass smoke exposure on chronic respiratory and/or cardiovascular outcomes among children and adults in rural Guatemala, Malawi, and Nepal; c) studies of the effects of arsenic in drinking water on lung health in both Bangladesh and Chile; d) studies of the effect of chronic exposure to hydrogen sulfide on respiratory health in Rotorua, NZ; and e) studies of the respiratory effects of exposures to pesticides and other chemicals among a birth cohort of Mexican children in the Salinas Valley of CA.
Dr. Balmes was appointed Physician Member of the CA Air Resources Board in 2008. In this role, he helps shape CA’s regulatory policies to control air quality and mitigate climate change.