Environmental and Occupational Epidemiology

The Harvard Chan School’s Environmental and Occupational Epidemiology program is multidisciplinary, with the aim to train students and fellows in state-of-the-science methodologies in environmental health, biostatistics and epidemiology.

Environmental and Occupational Epidemiology is the study of the influence of environmental and/or occupational exposures on human disease and health outcomes. This field of research aims to understand the influence of physical, chemical and biological environmental and occupational exposures on the etiology and severity of diseases and outcomes affecting individuals throughout the life course. Results from these studies provide scientific evidence for sound environmental and health policies.

Highlights of the program include:

• Breadth of courses covering environmental and occupational exposure assessment, risk assessment, specific environmental exposures (e.g. air pollution, water pollution, endocrine disruptors, metals, healthy buildings, climate and weather events), community exposures and environmental justice, contextual neighborhood characteristics (e.g. greenspace, built environment) and relevant statistical methodologies (e.g. statistical methods for continuous exposures, mixture analyses, spatial statistics).
• Students and fellows gain expertise on their outcome of interest through coursework and independent studies. In addition, they have the opportunity to gain skills in genetic epidemiology, -omics, and social determinants of health, to consider how they interact with and affect susceptibility to environmental exposures.
• Students and fellows work closely with our distinguished faculty who are conducting cutting-edge research in the environmental and occupational epidemiology of a host of different health outcomes (including but not limited to cancer, cardiopulmonary disease, reproductive outcomes, and neurological outcomes). 
• Integration with the Harvard affiliated hospitals allows researchers to leverage unique data resources, most notably several large prospective cohort and case-control studies and occupational cohorts.

Learn more about our faculty below: