This week in CEE 500, Dr. Anjum Hajat from UW School of Public Health will speak about unequal distribution of air pollution and its impacts on communities of color.

Join the  Zoom Meeting at 3:30 pm PST on Thursday, May 13, here.

Check out Spring schedule and recordings here.

Read the abstract for the lecture as well as learn more about the speaker by continuing to read.

Abstract:

Environmental Justice and Environmental Health Disparities: Air Pollution, Psychosocial Stressors and Health

Decades of research has shown that air pollution and other environmental hazards are unequally distributed, disproportionately impacting communities of color and the poor. These communities also face more psychosocial stressors, health risk factors and fewer protective factors resulting in increased vulnerability to the negative health effects of air pollution and causing environmental health disparities. In this talk I will present evidence about the unequal distribution of air pollution. Then I will share research that demonstrates how environmental factors and psychosocial stressors share biological pathways and how they act synergistically to result in negative health outcomes.

About the speaker:

Dr. Anjum Hajat is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Washington School of Public Health, a faculty affiliate at the Center for Studies on Demography and Ecology and at the West Coast Poverty Center. Her research seeks to understand how social and environmental determinants of health contribute to poor health and health disparities. She was awarded a NIH Career Development Award to study the intersection of psychosocial stressors and air pollution on cardiovascular disease. She received her MPH from the University of Michigan and her PhD from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. You can find more about Dr. Hajat here: https://epi.washington.edu/faculty/hajat-anjum/