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Brian S. Schwartz

Professor of Environmental Health Sciences, Johns Hopkins University

I am a physician and environmental epidemiologist with many years of experience in evaluating how a variety of environmental exposures and community conditions may influence health. I am interested in the connected issues of global environmental sustainability, and how land use, food production, and energy use are contributing to global climate change, ecosystem degradation, and biodiversity and species losses, and ultimately, posing important risks to individual and population health.

Much of my research is as Director of the Environmental Health Institute at the Geisinger Health System in Danville, PA, using extensive electronic health records in environmental epidemiologic research. There we have ongoing or developing studies of the built environment and obesity; the public health impacts of Marcellus shale development; the community health effects of animal feeding operations, including the risk of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA); the built environment, abandoned coal mine lands, and diabetes mellitus progression; the contribution of abandoned mine lands to community health and contextual effects; and evaluating the public health risks of energy scarcity and changing energy choices. As the co-director of the Program on Global Sustainability and Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, we are developing courses and research related to these areas.

I am a Fellow of the Post Carbon Institute, serving as an informal advisor on climate, energy, and health issues. I receive no payment for this role. My research is entirely independent of PCI, and is not motivated, reviewed, or funded by PCI.

Experience

  • –present
    Co-director, Program on Global Sustainability and Health, Johns Hopkins University