CHE Café: What’s Next in Environmental Health?

Linda is the former Director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the National Toxicology Program. She was granted Scientist Emeritus Status at NIH when she retired and is also a Scholar in Residence at the Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University. As NIEHS director, Dr. Birnbaum oversaw research grants and shared the results of cutting edge environmental health research with the public and policy makers. She also met with communities to better understand environmental health concerns and disparities. Throughout her career, Dr. Birnbaum has been particularly effective at bringing forward the mounting scientific evidence of harm of exposures to certain chemicals that are now ubiquitous in our products and environment. Her discussion of the current science has helped to shift our understanding of exposures to include the dangers of chronic low dose exposures and the long term effects of early lifetime exposures.

Ami is a population health scientist with expertise in environmental health, environmental justice, and maternal and reproductive health. Her research focuses on understanding social and structural determinants of environmental exposures and their consequent impacts to women’s health outcomes across the life course. Her long-term goal is to help secure environmental justice and health equity among systematically marginalized populations by advancing scientific inquiry, training next generation leaders, increasing public engagement with science, and supporting community-led solutions for structural change. Dr. Zota is the founding director of the Agents of Change in Environmental Justice program which seeks to foster more diverse, equitable and inclusive leaders in environmental and climate justice, training early career scientists from systematically marginalized backgrounds in science communication, storytelling, community engagement, and policy translation. Dr. Zota received CHE’s “20 Pioneers Under 40 in Environmental Public Health” award in 2018.

Steve Heilig is an editor, epidemiologist, ethicist, environmentalist, educator, and ethnomusicologist trained at five University of California campuses. He is co-editor of the Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics and of San Francisco Marin Medicine at the medical society he has long been part of. A former volunteer and director of the Zen Hospice Project, AIDS Foundation, and Planned Parenthood, he has helped improve laws and practices in reproductive and end-of-life care, drug policy, and environmental health. He is a longtime book critic and music journalist and emcee of the Sierra Nevada World Music Festival. He’s been part of Commonweal for 30 years now.