Our climate is our planet’s life support system, and the University of Michigan is spearheading innovative research and curriculum around evolving environmental threats to human health. As extreme weather events increase, air quality fluctuates, and illnesses transmitted by food, water, and disease-carriers such as mosquitoes and ticks broaden their impact, U-M experts are partnering with local communities to stage productive public health interventions.
From responding to climate change and extreme weather events to assessing the role of legacy infrastructure and institutions in public health, U-M researchers are on the forefront of sustainable and equitable public health interventions. Some of our key initiatives at the intersection of human health and the environment include: the Lifestage Environmental Exposures and Disease Center, the Children's Environmental Health and Disease Prevention Center, the Healthy Environments Partnership, the Center for Local, State and Urban Policy, the Center for Sustainable Systems , the Michigan Center on Lifestage Environmental Exposures and Disease (M-LEEAD) and Poverty Solutions. Find U-M experts in sustainability and environmental science, across fields and academic units.
A U-M study evaluated more than 5,800 foods, ranking them by their nutritional disease burden to humans and their impact on the environment. It found that substituting 10% of daily caloric intake from beef and processed meats for a mix of fruits, vegetables, nuts, legumes and select seafood could reduce your dietary carbon footprint by one-third and allow people to gain 48 minutes of healthy minutes per day.
New research used direct satellite observations of floods to reveal that the proportion of the world’s population exposed to floods has grown by 24% since the turn of the century—10 times higher than scientists previously thought—due to both increased flooding and population migration.
U-M researchers surveying wastewater systems for SARS-COV-2 will be able to increase testing sites and continue monitoring until 2023 after receiving more than $5 million from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.
Ensuring water access and affordability for Detroit residents is critical. The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the importance of universal access to safe and affordable water for public health, as well as the barriers and challenges to this goal created by conditions of high poverty and aging infrastructure.
Dana Dolinoy and Aubree Gordon, leading researchers in their fields from the U-M School of Public Health, have been selected as inaugural recipients of a new annual award from the U-M Biosciences Initiative. Dolinoy leads Michigan Public Health’s Environmental Epigenetics and Nutrition Laboratory, which investigates how nutritional and environmental factors interact with epigenetic gene regulation to shape health and disease.
Dolores Perales is the inaugural winner of the Young Climate Leader Award, given by the Michigan Climate Action Network. She is pursuing a dual master’s degree in urban and regional planning and environment and sustainability. Perales co-manages the Southwest Detroit Environmental Vision Project’s farms and orchard, including coordinating volunteers and working with the community to teach sustainability.
