Program Leadership

Dr. Jack Spengler

Director
spengler@hsph.harvard.edu

John Spengler, Ph.D., is the Akira Yamaguchi Professor of Environmental Health and Human Habitation in the Department of Environmental Health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He has conducted research on indoor and outdoor air pollution health effects and a variety of sustainability issues. Dr. Spengler was Director of the former Harvard’s Center for Health and the Global Environment (now Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment) and is a member of Harvard’s Greenhouse Gases Executive Committee. He served on the National Academies’ NRC committee “Green Schools: Attributes for Health and Learning” (Chair) and the IOM committee on “Effect of Climate Change on Indoor Air Quality and Public Health” (Chair). In 2003, Spengler received a Heinz Award for the Environment, and an honorary doctorate from the Technical University of Denmark.

Dr. Laura Kubzansky

Co-Director
lkubzans@hsph.harvard.edu

Laura Kubzansky, Ph.D., M.P.H. is Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Director of the Society and Health Psychophysiology Laboratory at the Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Kubzansky received her Ph.D. (social psychology) from the University of Michigan, and completed a two year postdoctoral fellowship in social epidemiology as well as a M.P.H. at the Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Kubzansky has published extensively on the role of psychological and social factors in health, with a particular focus on the effects of stress and emotion on heart disease. Widely recognized for her work demonstrating that emotions play an important role in the development of a number of disease outcomes including cardiovascular disease, lung function decline, and cancer, she is a frequent speaker on the topic. She also conducts research on whether stress, emotion and other psychological factors may help to explain the relationship between social status and health. Other research projects and interests include studying the biological mechanisms linking emotions, social relationships, and health; relationships between early childhood environments, resilience, and healthy aging; how interactions between stress and environmental exposures (e.g., lead, air pollution) may influence health; pathways by which education and cognitive performance may influence adult mental and physical health outcomes over the life course. She is a Fellow in the American Psychological Association, and the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research. She has served as Senior Advisor to the Robert Wood Johnson funded Positive Health Research program, as a member of the Healthy People 2020 Health-Related Quality of Life and Well-Being Workgroup, and of the American Heart Association, Science of Well-Being Expert Panel. She is PI or co-investigator on a wide variety of grants funded through the Veterans Administration, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, EPA, NIH and others.

Dr. Marc Weisskopf

Co-Director
mweissko@hsph.harvard.edu

Marc G. Weisskopf, Ph.D., Sc.D., is Professor of Environmental and Occupational Epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Weisskopf received his Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of California, San Francisco, his Sc.D. in Epidemiology from the Harvard School of Public Health, and spent two years as an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer at the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control. His neuroscience work focused on molecular and cellular aspects of neural signaling and plasticity at the mossy fiber synapse of the hippocampus and cortical inputs to the amygdala. His epidemiological expertise and research focuses on neurological function and disease—including Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, cognitive function, psychiatric conditions, and Autism—with a particular emphasis on the role of environmental factors.

Dr. Gary Adamkiewicz

Co-Director
 

Gary Adamkiewicz, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Environmental Health and Exposure Disparities at the Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Adamkiewicz received his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and his M.P.H. in Quantitative Methods from the Harvard School of Public Health. His research interests span a broad range, linked by the common factor of importance of place in environmental and public health. Dr. Adamkiewicz seeks to shed more light on this question through several research initiatives: looking at housing-related exposure disparities, evidence-based intervention tactics, healthy urbanization, and food in our future.

Read more about the Directors’ research. 

Advisors

Allison Appleton
Senior Fellow Advisor
JPB EH Fellow cohort I (2014-2018)

Allison Appleton, Associate Professor of Epidemiology & Biostatistics, State University of New York at Albany, School of Public Health. An epidemiologist with expertise in the social determinants of health, environmental epidemiology and epigenetics, her research focuses on how psychosocial stressors and environmental toxicant exposures occurring during sensitive periods of development, like pregnancy and childhood, can jointly influence health and health inequalities over the life course. She also studies how positive psychosocial and environmental factors can promote good health and resilience for families.

 

Diana Hernandez
Senior Fellow Advisor
JPB EH Fellow cohort I (2014-2018)

Diana Hernández, Associate Professor of Sociomedical Sciences, Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. Her work focuses on the social and environmental determinants of health by querying the impacts of policy and place-based interventions on the health and socioeconomic well-being of vulnerable populations. Her community-oriented research examines the intersections between the built environment (housing and neighborhoods), poverty/equity and health with a particular emphasis on energy insecurity.

Advisory Committee

The original Advisory Committee offered a valuable knowledge and expertise to develop and craft the mission and the main goals of the Fellowship Program. It was composed by:

Michelle Williams, Sc.D.
Dean of the Faculty
Harvard School of Public Health

Francesca Dominici, Ph.D.
Professor of Biostatistics
Senior Associate Dean for Research
Harvard School of Public Health

Richard Jackson, M.D, M.P.H
Professor, Urban Planning Environmental Health Sciences
Institute of Environment & Sustainability
Chair, Environmental Health Sciences
UCLA School of Public Health

Suzette M. Kimball, Ph.D.
Director, U.S. Geological Survey
United States Geological Survey

Jon Levy, Sc.D.
Professor of Environmental Health
Boston University School of Public Health

Doug Dockery
Department of Environmental Health
Harvard School of Public Health