New course brings public health and design students together to learn what makes buildings “healthy”
Joe Allen, Associate Professor of Exposure Assessment Science in the Department of Environmental Health, has taught the Healthy Buildings course at the Harvard T.H. Chan school of Public Health since 2016. Over the years he has had many students at the Harvard School of Design take the class. But this spring will mark the first time that the class is officially cross-listed at both Schools and be co-taught with Dr. Allen and GSD’s Dr. Holly W. Samuelson.
“There’s magic when public health students and design students are in the same room,” says Allen, “because it forces interactions between the fields that unfortunately haven’t always happened historically. Very few universities have both a design school and public health school, so we have an incredible opportunity to merge the disciplines right on our own campus.”
In the class, public health and design students will explore building strategies that can improve indoor air quality, help prevent the spread of airborne infectious disease, reduce exposure to toxic materials, improve thermal resilience, and support overall well-being, while also examining the role buildings play in our energy system, the cascading health impacts of associated air pollution and climate change, and building design and technologies that can support climate mitigation, climate adaptation, and climate resilience.
This course is jointly offered by Harvard Chan as EH 252 and the GSD as SCI 6361. It will meet for the first half of the semester (January 30–March 6, 2025) at Harvard Chan and the second half (March 13-April 24, 2025) at the GSD.
