UR institute expanding on research into environment’s effects on health

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A recently launched institute at the University Rochester is expanding upon its decades of research into how the environment plays a major role in human health.

Launched in January, the UR’s Institute for Human Health and the Environment integrates programs and expertise across the university, fostering new collaborations and approaches to create effective solutions to significant issues that are at the intersection of environmental factors and human health.

Leaders envision that the institute will serve as a local and national hub to catalyze new scientific discoveries related to environmental impacts on health and transform this information into actions that will promote healthier lives for all. 

Key areas of research are related to: 

> Climate change and health,

> Environmental justice,

> What is in our water and air and how it impacts our health, and

> How environmental factors shape health across our whole lifetime.

The institute is led by B. Paige Lawrence, who is also the Wright Family Research Professor and chair of the department of Environmental Medicine at the URMC, as well as director of the Environmental Health Sciences Center. 

The new venture is well positioned, she said.

“We’re building off an extremely strong foundation,” Lawrence said. “The institute is a way to pull us all together, centralize our approach and help each other solve the big problems across disciplines.” 

Lawrence noted that everything around us — from the foods we consume and the air we breathe to the changing climate — influences our health.

She pointed out that finding solutions to challenges related to these areas could help fight diseases, including cancer, heart disease, and neurodegenerative disorders, as well as one’s ability to fight infection. 

The institute builds on a long history of how the living environment influences the health of individuals and communities, Lawrence said, noting the university has been a leader in research and education in environmental health and toxicology since the 1940s. 

For example, teams at UR contributed to Rochester’s local lead poisoning prevention system, which has resulted in lead poisoning rates declining 2.4 times faster than elsewhere in the state and has served as a national model for community-based action. 

The researchers affiliated with the institute say that quality of life and longevity are more closely tied to zip code than genetic code.

They believe that solutions to today’s most pressing health issues require a creative and sustained commitment to research, education and engagement to understand how the environment influences health across the lifespan.

The institute’s initial goal is to raise awareness and increase its visibility, Lawrence said, adding that will be followed by engaging the community and gathering data.

Activities within the institute will be anchored in engagement between the university and local and global partners to shape research and to evaluate and inform changes in policies, systems and communities.

“The opportunity to innovate and address daunting problems will be exciting,” Lawrence said.

Katrina Smith Korfmacher is director of engagement at the institute and professor of Environmental Medicine, Public Health Sciences and the Center for Community Health and Prevention.

She said the new institute broadens the scope of research beyond environmental exposures.

That reach allows the institute, in concert with community partners, to engage and build upon work that could lead to progress addressing top challenges, including environmental justice and climate change.

The holistic approach includes the creation of an advisory board comprised of a range of people from various sectors, including academia, health care, nonprofits, government and business.

The institute focuses on partnerships, working with local companies on areas such as workforce safety issues for employees who work outdoors and companies that address microplastics in water.

She pointed to additional work that has been done with outside agencies to assess the relationship between housing stock and health with a focus on air quality improvements as well as the impacts of urban reforestation.

It will be important to address such challenges in the coming years and the institute can play a role, she said, as UR research has done in the past.

“The results can be very powerful,” Korfmacher said. 

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