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About EHS Research Program

What are the goals of Environment Health and Society Research Program?

The goal of the EHS program is to improve the science used to make decisions to advance the wellbeing of people and ecosystems. EHS conceptual framework (see below ) serves to increase the relevance of science to policy making.

Previously, research that relied exclusively on areas like toxicology or engineering limited the impact on environmental governance and human health.  Now including the research on complex environmental interactions means that better, more rigorous evaluations of environmental governance can be performed.

This will allow us to determine if current environmental policy is exacerbating or improving the disproportionate environmental burdens of disadvantaged populations. As this understanding grows, the scientific basis for environmental regulatory and policy decisions will improve dramatically, and will ensure that everyone enjoys the same degree of protection from environmental and health hazards.

The EHS program hopes to develop environmental health research methods, policy evaluation tools and interventions. It will do this through collaboration and partnership among private, public, and international organizations and dozens of academic disciplines. EHS also makes citizen participation a key feature of integrated research. Our current research portfolio includes:

• Enhancing children’s health
• Understanding health disparities
• Cumulative risk assessment
• Endocrine-disrupting chemicals
• Tribal environmental health
• Environmental public health indicators
• Computational toxicology

This conceptual framework, adapted from Wakefield and Baxter, demonstrates the complex connections between different environments and social processes on both human health and the environment. Social standing and individual identity serve as two dimensions that are influenced by social and institutional arrangements such as public and private sectors, community-based organizations, zoning, land use decisions, economic structures, residential segregation and education.

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