Fall 2015 Seminar Schedule.

Join us every Friday from 12:45-1:45pm in BUSM L210.

Detailed Schedule

September 11th

Introduction to the Environmental Health Department Seminar Series: Evaluating Local and Global Environmental Health Disparities:  Methods and Applications

Speakers: Lariah Edwards, BS and Anna Rosofsky, MA,

Doctoral Students, Department of Environmental Health, Boston University School of Public Health

September 18

No Seminar: SPH School Wide Meeting

September 25

Racial Inequalities in Health: Opportunities for Greater Integration of Environmental Research

Speaker: David R. Williams, PhD, MPH
Florence Sprague Norman and Laura Smart Norman Professor of Public Health,
Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH);
Professor of African and African American Studies and of Sociology at Harvard University
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/david-williams/

Summary:
Racial and ethnic stigmatized populations experience higher rates of illness, impairment and death than the average of their societies in the U.S. and globally. These disparities are also seen in the earlier onset of illness, more severe disease and poorer quality of care for racial/ethnic minorities compared to their majority peers. Socioeconomic status (SES), whether measured by income, education or occupational status, is among the most robust determinants of variations in health. All indicators of SES are strongly patterned by race, but racial disparities in health typically persist, although reduced, across all levels of SES. “Race” reflects simultaneously unmeasured confounding for biological factors linked to ancestral history and geographic origins, and environmental exposures. These environmental factors include the current psychological, social, physical and chemical environment, as well as, exposures over the life-course and across generations, and biological adaptation to these environmental exposures. Directions for future research and intervention are discussed

Speaker Information:
Dr. Williams focuses on racial and socioeconomic differentials in health. He has devoted considerable attention to identifying how life experiences directly linked to race affect health status and can explain racial differences in health. This has included developmental work on how perceptions of racial bias can affect health status. He has contributed to several integrative summaries outlining the conditions under which discrimination at both the interpersonal and the institutional level can adversely affect multiple indicators of health. Williams has also investigated how coping resources and strategies ranging from social support and religiosity to psychological attributes and health behaviors can modify the effects of stress on health. Much of his work has involved the analysis of large epidemiological studies. He has extensive experience with quantitative research strategies and in analyzing large, complex data sets. His current research includes studying the correlates of the health of Black Caribbean immigrants in the U.S., examining how race-related stressors (racial discrimination in the U.S. and exposure to torture during Apartheid in South Africa) can affect health, examining the biological pathways by which stress is related to health, and assessing the ways in which religious involvement can affect health.

Recommended Readings:

Williams DR, Wyatt R. Racial Bias in Health Care and Health: Challenges and Opportunities. JAMA. 2015;314(6):555-556.

Williams DR, Mohammed SA, Leavell J, Collins C. Race, socioeconomic status, and health: complexities, ongoing challenges, and research opportunities. Ann N Y Acad Sci. 1186:69-101.

Mini-Series I: Methods to Study Environmental Health Disparities

October 2

Disparities in Exposure and Health Effects of Multiple Environmental Stressors Across the Life Course

Speaker: Jon Levy, ScD
Co-director: Boston University Center for Disparities in Exposure and Health Effects of Multiple Environmental Stressors across the Life Course
Associate Chair of Environmental Health, Environmental Health, Boston University School of Public Health

Summary: TBA

Speaker Information:
Dr. Levy’s research centers on air pollution exposure assessment and health risk assessment, with a focus on urban environments and issues of heterogeneity and equity. Major research topics include evaluating spatial patterns of air pollution in complex urban terrain, developing methods to quantify the magnitude and distribution of health benefits associated with emissions controls for motor vehicles and power plants, using systems science approaches to evaluate the influence of indoor environmental exposures on pediatric asthma in low-income housing, and developing methods for community-based cumulative risk assessment that includes chemical and non-chemical stressors. He has been a member of several National Research Council committees, including the Committee on Science for EPA’s Future, the Committee on Health Impact Assessment, and the Committee on Improving Risk Analysis Approaches Used by the US Environmental Protection Agency. He also serves on the Advisory Council on Clean Air Compliance Analysis, which provides guidance to EPA on the impact of the Clean Air Act on health, the economy, and the environment. Dr. Levy is the Director of the newly created, Boston University Center for Disparities in Exposure and Health Effects of Multiple Environmental Stressors across the Life Course.

Recommended Readings:

Harper S, Ruder E, Roman HA, Geggel A, Nweke O, Payne-Sturges D and Levy JI. Using Inequality Measures to Incorporate Environmental Justice into Regulatory Analyses. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2013. 10(9), 4039-4059Adamkiewicz G, Zota AR, Fabian MP, Chahine T, Julien R, Spengler JD, Levy JI.

Adakiewicz G, Zota AR, Fabian P, Chahine T, Julien R, Spengler JD, Levy JI. Moving environmental justice indoors: understanding structural influences on residential exposure patterns in low-income communities. Am J Public Health. 2011 Dec; 101 Suppl 1:S238-45

October 9

Community Engaged Research on Environmental Injustice and Environmental Health Inequalities: Why bother?

Speaker: Madeleine L. Scammell, DSc
Department of Environmental Health, BUSPH

https://www.bu.edu/sph/profile/madeleine-scammell/

Summary: From 1995-2000 Dr. Scammell ran an international Community Research Network, advocating for community-university research partnerships, and linking communities with research questions to scientists. For the last 15 years she has worked with the Community Engagement Core of the BU Superfund Research Program and will now head the Community Engagement Core of the new Center for Health Disparities. In this seminar she will discuss the history of terms, including community “engagement” and health “disparities,” and their relationship to social movements to address environmental injustice, racism, and health inequalities. Drawing from examples including the breast cancer movement, and the epidemic of chronic kidney disease in Central America, she will engage participants in a discussion about the value of community engaged research, closing with an introduction to the plans for the Center for Health Disparities.

Speaker Information:
Dr. Scammell serves as leader of the Boston University Superfund Research Program Community Engagement Core. In this capacity her work includes developing mechanisms to support long-and short-term research relationships between community groups and scientists, and responding to community requests for scientific assistance. Dr. Scammell is also a JPB Environmental Health Fellow at Harvard School of Public Health. Her expertise is in the area of community-driven and community-based participatory research and includes the use of qualitative methods in the area of environmental health and epidemiologic studies. Her particular interest is in the combined effects of social and environmental stressors (e.g., exposure to chemical hazards and air pollution along with violence and immigration insecurity). She is the Principal Investigator of an EPA STAR grant to study cumulative risk in the urban environmental justice population of Chelsea, MA, where she lives and works in partnership with the Chelsea Collaborative. Dr. Scammell has also partnered with the Boston Housing Authority, the Boston Public Health Commission and investigators at the Boston University School of Social Work on several studies to address systemic, social and structural environmental health stressors in the home. One such study includes the assessment of hoarding behavior (clutter) and sanitation, and their impact on Integrated Pest Management, along with piloting interventions to assist residents whose tenancy is threatened. Another is an evaluation of a home-based asthma intervention to address housing code violations that are known asthma triggers. Dr. Scammell is also co-investigator on study of the epidemic of chronic kidney disease of unknown causes in Central America, and is a member of the Consortium for the Epidemic of Nephropathy in Central America and Mexico. Dr. Scammell serves of the Board of Health in the City of Chelsea, as Chair of the board of directors of the Science & Environmental Health Network, and as an editor of New Solutions: A Journal of Environmental and Occupational Health Policy.

October 16

Geographical information systems (GIS), public data, and environmental health disparities

Speaker: M. Patricia Fabian, ScD
Department of Environmental Health, BUSPH
https://www.bu.edu/sph/profile/m-fabian/

Summary:
Characterizing and ultimately addressing environmental health disparities (EHDs) requires approaches that can estimate multi-stressor exposures across entire communities and their vulnerable subpopulations. Advances in geographic information systems (GIS) and availability of public data now allow us to obtain information at multiple geographical scales—even down to an address level, necessary to fully describe EHD patterns at multiple scales and levels of resolution.

Speaker Information:
Dr. Fabian combines her expertise in environmental health, environmental engineering, systems science, and geographical information systems (GIS) to study complex multi-stressor public health problems. Aerobiology projects have included studies of bioaerosol disinfection, respiratory infectious disease transmission, and environmental bioaerosol sampling optimization. Ongoing projects include developing discrete event simulation models to evaluate the impact of building interventions on indoor environmental conditions and on pediatric asthma outcomes; constructing land use regression models to estimate historical air pollution exposure; developing cumulative exposure models at a Superfund site; and applying spatial statistical methods to study the combined effect of chemical and non-chemical exposures on pediatric neuropsychological outcomes.

October 23

No Seminar (Bicknell Lecture on October 21)

Mini-Series II: Biological Mechanisms in Environmental Health Disparities

October 30

Epigenetics and Mitochondromics in the Study of EHDs Due to the Cumulative Effects of Adverse Environmental Exposures to Pollutants over the Life Course

Speaker: Andrea Baccarelli, MD, PhD, MPH
Mark and Catherine Winkler Associate Professor of Environmental Epigenetics, Department of Environmental Health
Department of Epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/andrea-baccarelli/

Summary:
Epigenetics is a fast growing field – with increasing applications in human research epidemiology – that focuses on mechanisms that can stably/heritably influence gene expression. Interest in epigenetic phenomena has dramatically intensified over the last two decades with an exponential increase in PubMed-indexed publications from fewer than 150 in 1990 to over 20,000 in 2015. Publically available data from the NIH RePORTER reveal that the U.S. National Institutes of Health spends over $700 million on epigenetics every year. The seminar will focus on the design of human studies featuring epigenetics and its application to environmental health and disparity research. Emphasis will be given to leveraging existing resources from ongoing studies, as well as to initiating new investigations. Results from ongoing studies will be presented to introduce epigenetic effects in prenatal/early and adult life environmental stressors. The seminar will enable attendees to ascertain advantages and pitfalls of different designs in the conduction of epigenetic studies, particularly in relation to disparity and environmental health research.

Speaker Information:
Dr. Baccarelli is the Mark and Catherine Winkler Associate Professor of Environmental Epigenetics in the Department of Environmental Health, Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Baccarelli’s research focuses on epigenomics as a unique molecular substrate reflecting the impact of environmental exposures on human health. Epigenetic marks, including DNA methylation, histone modifications, and non-coding RNAs, modify chromatin structure and gene expression without changing the underlying DNA sequence. Dr. Baccarelli’s laboratory is dedicated to the investigation of environmental epigenetics at different life-stages. Ongoing projects range from the investigation of the effects of in-utero exposures to toxic metals, second-hand smoking, and psychosocial stress on the methylome of human fetal tissues to the study of the influences of air pollution on non-coding miRNA in adult and elderly individuals. Epigenetic mechanisms are investigated in relation to fetal growth and perinatal outcomes, cardiovascular function, obesity, and neuro-cognition. Active studies include investigations in the U.S., Mexico, China, Italy, Bulgaria, Poland, Thailand, Oman, and Bangladesh.

Recommended Readings:

Burris HH, Baccarelli AA. Environmental epigenetics: from novelty to scientific discipline. J Appl Toxicol. 2014 Feb;34(2):113-6.

Riccardo E Marioni, Sonia Shah, Allan F McRae, et al. DNA methylation age of blood predicts all-cause mortality in later life. Genome Biology 2015, 16:25.

November 6

Speakers: James Watt, MPH

Emma Virginia Preston, MPH

Doctoral Students, Department of Environmental Health, Boston University School of Public Health

Summary: TBA

November 13

No Seminar- EH Departmental Retreat

November 20

Psychosocial Stress and Neuroendocrine and Reproductive Health Outcomes; the Vital Village Community Engagement Network

Speaker: Renée Boynton-Jarrett, MD, ScD
Department Pediatrics
Boston University School of Medicine
http://www.bumc.bu.edu/busm/profile/renee-boynton-jarrett/

Summary:
TBA

Speaker Information:
Boynton-Jarrett, MD, ScD is a pediatrician and social epidemiologist and the founding director of the Vital Village Community Engagement Network (www.vitalvillage.org). Her work focuses on the role of early-life adversities as life course social determinants of health. She has a specific concentration on psychosocial stress and neuroendocrine and reproductive health outcomes, including obesity and early puberty. She is interested in social ecology and the role of neighborhood attributes in influencing health trajectory. Specifically, she has studied the intersection of community violence, intimate partner violence, and child abuse and neglect and neighborhood characteristics that influence these patterns. Her current work is developing community-based strategies to promote child well-being and reduce child maltreatment using a collective impact approach in three Boston neighborhoods.

November 26

No Seminar- Thanksgiving Holiday

December 4

Identification of Genetic and Environmental Factors Contributing to Breast Cancer in Women of African Ancestry: The Black Women’s Health Study

Speaker: Julie Palmer, ScD
Senior Epidemiologist, Slone Epidemiology Center
Professor of Epidemiology, Boston University School of Public Health
http://www.bu.edu/slone/about/staff/palmer/

Summary: TBA

Speaker Information:
Dr. Palmer’s major research interest is the etiology of breast cancer in African American women. She was instrumental in designing and implementing the Black Women’s Health Study and has served as co-investigator of the study since its inception in 1995. Dr. Palmer is director of genetics research in the Black Women’s Health Study and has spearheaded efforts to use DNA from study participants in studies of the genetics of breast cancer, lupus, uterine fibroids, and sarcoidosis. Dr. Palmer’s current research is directed at understanding the etiology of specific subtypes of breast cancer, in particular, estrogen-receptor negative breast cancer, the subtype that carries the worst prognosis and disproportionately affects women of African ancestry. She is Multiple-PI of a collaborative Program Project which combines data and samples from four epidemiologic studies of breast cancer in African American women for identification of genetic and nongenetic factors related to specific breast cancer subtypes. Dr. Palmer’s work focuses on the relation of parity and lactation to risk of specific subtypes, and the interaction of these exposures with genetic variants in pathways related to hormone metabolism and inflammation. As PI of the Boston University arm of the NCI follow-up study of DES-exposed persons, Dr. Palmer has conducted research related to the possible effects of prenatal DES exposure on incidence of breast cancer.

December 11

Speakers: Chloe Chung, MPH

Jessica Craig, MPH

Doctoral Students, Department of Environmental Health, Boston University School of Public Health

Summary: TBA

December 15

Speaker: Alexis Maule, MPH

Doctoral Student, Department of Environmental Health, Boston University School of Public Health