Maintaining good health can be a puzzle under the best of circumstances: when nutritious diets, safe homes, accessible green spaces, and quality health care are readily available. But what happens when individuals must navigate a harmful environment and social injustices to ensure good health for themselves and their families? How can public health experts, health care providers, environmental scientists, and others provide some of those needed missing puzzle pieces?
Many scholars at Penn are hoping to do just that. In this new installment of Penn’s Environmental Innovations Initiative Explainer series, hear from two Penn experts, Heather Burris, associate professor of pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine, and Marilyn Howarth, an occupational and environmental medicine physician and adjunct associate professor of pharmacology at the Perelman School of Medicine. They share what environmental heath hazards mean for the health of our communities and what scientists and health care professionals are doing to help.
Drs. Burris and Howarth are both members of the PRCCEH as well as the Center of Excellence in Environmental Toxicology.