Environmental Health

Train tracks in downtown Atlanta before the belt line was created

Can Green Space Be Good for Everyone?

Lauren Balotin

Do urban green spaces improve health or widen health disparities? How can cities avoid eco-gentrification and ensure all members of the community provide input when designing greening interventions?

family canoeing down flooded road in Houston, Texas

Disease in the Era of Climate Change: Human Disease Burdens in a Dynamic World

Introduced by John Meeker

In the field of public health alone, climate change will in some way impact every area of this broad, diverse discipline. How will human health adapt to a rapidly changing world and to rapidly evolving disease burdens as climate change threatens natural environments and already vulnerable populations?

Presenters and other participants in the University of Michigan’s Conference on Race and the Incidence of Environmental Hazards in front of the Dana Building, 1990.

Grass Roots: The Sustainable Shifts that Lead to Environmental Justice

Todd Ziegler, MS ’15

When civil rights leaders, environmentalists, and researchers converged on the university in 1990 for the Conference on Race and the Incidence of Environmental Hazards, they were part of a much larger movement focusing the nation on environmental justice.

Illustration of people talking

Changing the Narrative around a Changing Climate

Ashley Bieniek-Tobasco, BS ’11, MPH ’13, DrPH

Do fear-inducing representations of climate change actually motivate people to take action? As the influence of popular media grows, communicators across the sciences have an opportunity and a responsibility to shift climate conversations from messages of doom to narratives of hope.

1970 Diag Rally

50 Years Later, the Future Awaits

Dean F. DuBois Bowman and Dean Jonathan Overpeck

Fifty years after a Michigan “teach-in” provided a blueprint and momentum for thousands of other events around the country, we must continue looking forward to new iterations of environmental consciousness and care as we seek to be part of the solutions to global climate change.