Institutions

University of Chile

Dr. Paulina Pino (co-PI) is an Associate Professor in the School of Public Health at the University of Chile. She was trained as an epidemiologist in the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, and has extensive field experience, most recently in air pollution epidemiology and children’s health. In addition to working in Chile, she has worked in Guatemala and Brazil. She has directed or collaborated on grants from the International Development Research Center (IDRC)-Canada, NIH (US), and the Chilean Science Fund (CONICYT), for environmental studies. She was previously chair of the Division of Epidemiology in the School. In 2002 she led the creation of the PhD program within the School, and since then has been the Director of the PhD program. Dr. Pino is fluent in English. For 10 years she has been the Chilean lead for the Fogarty ITREOH grant with Emory, and helped train new researchers in the area of environmental health.

Dr. Verónica Iglesias has a PhD in epidemiology from the University of Chile School of Public Health. As anenvironmental epidemiologist she has lead studies on exposures to metals including lead, arsenic and nickel and health effects in children in northern Chile. She currently participates in projects of exposure to fine and ultrafine particles in bike commuters and exposure to  organophosphate pesticides in schoolchildren. She has conducted research on respiratory effects from exposure to secondhand smoke in employees of bars and restaurants of Santiago. These studies have provided key input into the discussion of amendments to the tobacco law in Chile.

Emory University

Dr. Steenland (co-PI) is a Professor in the Department of Environmental Health at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University. He is an environmental and occupational epidemiologist with 30 years experience. He is fluent in Spanish and is the PI of our current Fogarty ITREOH grant, based in Chile and Peru. Dr. Steenland worked for 20 years at the National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety (NIOSH/CDC). Among other NIOSH projects of relevance to the curent proposal, he worked on several pesticide studies, including field work in Mexico on a common fungicide. In 2002 he moved the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory, where he currently works on the health effects of water contamined with fluorocarbons, and on the health effects of lead exposure among adults exposed occupationally. He also is the leader of the Data Core of the Emory Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, where he leads a project on pesticides and neurologic disease in Costa Rica. He has first-authored over 100 publications on environmental and occupational health, including two textbooks.

Dr. Karen Levy’s (co-I) work explores how environmental change affects transmission and incidence of infectious diseases, focusing on the ecology and epidemiology of waterborne disease. She is currently involved in research on transmission of diarrheal pathogens; household, irrigation, and distribution system water quality; impacts of climate on waterborne disease; and the role of food production systems on the evolution and spread of antibiotic resistance. She has been involved in the current ITREOH project since 2010. Dr. Levy is starting her third year as an assistant professor at Emory University, and this project will build her leadership skills as a new investigator in the global health arena. She speaks Spanish fluently, has been involved in ongoing research in Ecuador since 2003, and has also worked in Guatemala, Mexico, Micronesia, and The Philippines. She is currently the principal investigator on an FIC-funded R21 grant entitled “Social Vulnerability and Climatic Drivers of Enteric Disease in Rural Ecuador”.

University of Georgia

Dr. Luke Naeher (co-I) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Environmental Health Science at UGA’s College of Public Health. Before joining UGA, Dr. Naeher worked as an environmental epidemiologist with the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) National Center for Environmental Health. Dr. Naeher’s research focus is exposure assessment and environmental epidemiology with a particular focus on health effects related to air pollution. Dr. Naeher has current research projects on exposures related to household air pollution from cookstoves in Peru (children and pregnant women), woodsmoke and vegetative smoke from forest fires in the southeastern US (forest firefighters), and second hand smoke in outdoor settings in Athens, GA (college students) . He has been involved in the current ITREOH project since 2006. While at UGA, Dr. Naeher has taught undergraduate and/or graduate classes in environmental health science, epidemiology, air pollution, and environmental health in the developing world, and is currently the major professor for several MS, PhD, and DrPH graduate students. Dr. Naeher has worked extensively on environmental and occupational health issues in the developing world, including: household air pollution studies in Guatemala and Peru (children, women [including pregnant women], workers); metals exposure assessment studies in India (children) and Peru (children, women, workers); environmental chemical exposures in Peru (pregnant women, workers); and ambient air pollution in the Philippines. Dr. Naeher served on the Chemical Exposure Core Workgroup as part of the active planning process for the National Children’s Study, and currently serves on both the World Health Organizations’s Indoor Air Quality Guidelines Development Group and the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves Health Working Group.