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"The focus of the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health (EOH) is discovering and analyzing the links between human health and the environment. The faculty is multidisciplinary and includes physicians, chemists, toxicologists, cancer scientists, and other public health scientists.These diverse researchers share common goals - to discover and analyze the links between human health and exposure to the environmental and occupational stressors with the intent of risk reduction and improvements in public health, as well as the prevention and control of new and emerging environmental health problems.
The graduate training programs in Environmental and Occupational Health are both interdisciplinary and interdepartmental. The Department of Environmental and Occupational Health is committed to the highest quality performance of mechanism-based and evidence-based research. The rapid advancement and emerging knowledge in the Human Genome and Proteomes are significantly impacting the understanding of environmental health and management strategies for prevention, control and maintenance. An important aspect of our EOH teaching and research is the intermixing of scientists working to identify underlying mechanisms of the causes of genetic susceptibilities and dysregulation of signal transduction to environmental disease with the more applied scientists.
The application of this research is to help detect, prevent, and control adverse influences of the environment on human health, based on the understanding of the complex interplay of genetic variations with environmental stressors. Our faculties are pursuing research on how the built environment and environmental stressors interact to influence human health and health-related behaviors that goes beyond the traditional focus on hazardous agents. The department focuses on graduate training in the areas of Toxicology, Environmental and Occupational Epidemiology, Global Health, and Occupational Hygiene & Management in order to prepare environmental health professionals and researchers.
Toxicology: Focuses on how genetic variations and defects in signal transduction networks are involved in individual susceptibility to environmental stressors. In the toxicology focus, students learn skills for developing, interpreting, and using toxicological data for solving environmental health problems. Training includes basic biomedical and public health sciences such as Gene Environment Interactions, Signal Transduction, Endocrine Toxicology, Environmental and Occupational Epidemiology, and Biostatistics, and more specialized studies in Toxicology, and Risk Assessment.
Environmental and Occupational Epidemiology: Focuses on identifying and measuring the influence of environmental factors on human diseases in the community; and providing scientific evidence for sound environmental health policies.
Global Health: Focuses on the relationship between human health and the environment in the world. Some of the most profound environmental changes are occuring in the poorest countries where nearly all of the world’s population growth is observed. Many major health determinants in poor countries, both now and in the future, are related to environmental health issues. The coursework in this focus area study the link between the global environment and human health.
Occupational Hygiene and Management: Focuses on occupational health / safety, industrial hygiene, injury and violence prevention, and also provides relevant courses for students interested in occupational medicine, occupational health nursing, and occupational safety. Coursework includes the management of occupational health programs, risk assessment, and evaluation of preventive measures in the workplace.
Deodutta Roy, MS, M.Phil, PhD
Department Chair
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