
The Global Environmental and Occupational Health (GEOHealth) project supported by the Fogarty International Centre, US National Institutes of Health, is a partnership between the Public Health Foundation of India and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Visit the new GEOHealth India Hub webpage for more information and latest updates (2022-2027): https://www.geohealthindia.org/
Collaborators
- Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI), Delhi-NCR, India
- Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health (HSPH), Boston, USA
- Centre of Excellence-Centre for Cardio-metabolic Risk Reduction in South Asia (CoE-CARRS), India
- Madras Diabetes Research Foundation (MDRF), Chennai, India
- All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi, India
- Emory University, Atlanta, USA
- Sri Ramachandra University (SRU), Chennai, India
- Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), New Delhi, India
- Urban Emissions Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi, India
Governance
Administrative oversight Committee
- Dr. David HunterCo-chair
- Prof. K. Srinath ReddyCo-chair
- Dr. Richard CashHSPH
- Dr. Joel SchwartzHSPH
- Dr. Lindsey JaacksHSPH
- Dr. Francesca DominiciHSPH
- Dr. Rao AiyagariPHFI
- Dr. PrabhakaranPHFI
- Dr. Sanjay ZodpeyPHFI
- Dr. Damodar Bachani, Ministry of Health & Family Welfare
- Dr. Dan Greenbaum, Health Effects Institute
- Dr. V. Mohan, Madras Diabetes Research Foundation
- Dr. Nikhil Tandon, All India Institute of Medical Sciences
Training oversight Committee
- Dr. Richard CashHSPH
- Dr. Joel SchwartzHSPH
- Dr. Nancy SeiberHSPH
- Dr. PrabhakaranPHFI
- Dr. Sanjay ZodpeyPHFI
Publications, Presentations, and Ancillary Studies Policy (PP&A) committee
- Dr. Preet K. DhillonCo-chair
- Dr. Dominici FrancescaCo-chair
PHFI Team
- Prof. Srinath ReddyPrincipal Investigator
- Prof. D. PrabhakaranPrincipal Investigator
- Dr. Preet K DhillonCo-Investigator
- Dr. Roopa ShivashankarCo-investigator
- Dr. Safraj Shahul HameedCo-investigator
- Ms. Melina S. MagsumbolCo-investigator
- Mr. Bhargav KrishnaCo-Investigator
- Dr. Gagandeep K WaliaCo-investigator
- Dr. Ajay VamadevanCo-investigator
- Dr. Suganthi JaganathanProject Coordinator
- Mr. Kishore KumarResearch Fellow
- Mr. Sanjeev AggarwalFinance officer
- Dr. Dimple KondalStatistician
- Dr. Siddhartha MandalStatistician
HSPH Team
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
- Richard CashPrincipal Investigator
- Joel SchwartzPrincipal Investigator
- Doug DockeryFaculty/Mentor
- Petros KoutrakisFaculty/Mentor
- David ChristianiFaculty/Mentor
- Nancy Long SieberProgram Manager
- Yeo R KatherineCoordinator
HSPH Faculty
- Lindsey Jaacks
- Brent Coull
- Rafael Irizarry
- David Hunter
- Francine Laden
- Donna Spiegelman
- Glorian Sorensen
- Wish Vishwanath
- Lisa Berkman
- Subu Subramanian
- Wafaie Fawzi
- Frank Hu
- Vishal Vaidya
The project aims to accelerate scientific infrastructure development, enhance capacity, and support research needed to fully characterize the relationship between air pollution and cardio-metabolic (CM) risk factors and diseases in India. The project also aims to build a critical core of environmental health researchers in India that will help develop the evidence base for health-centric policy-making across sectors moving forward.
Research
Aim 1: Estimate air pollution exposure in Chennai and New Delhi.
Aim 2: Estimate the association between exposure to air pollution, temperature, CM risk factors, and CM diseases, and characterize susceptibility to these risk factors and diseases.
Aim 3: Characterize DNA methylation patterns associated with air pollution and investigate whether they predict air pollution-mediated cardiovascular health effects.
Aim 4: Estimate the association between ambient exposure to air pollution and blood vitamin D levels in Chennai and New Delhi.
Capacity Building
Short Term Training Courses in India
Mentored Opportunities at HSPH
Masters Level Training Program at HSPH
- Rapid urbanization has given India some of the world’s worst air pollution, a factor implicated in the deaths of more than 620,000 Indians each year.
- According to the World Health Organization (WHO), Delhi’s air is the most polluted in the world.
- Recent findings by the WHO, which examined pollution levels in nearly 1,600 cities in 91 countries for the years 2008 to 2013, show that the annual mean fine particulate matter (PM2.5) concentration in Delhi was 153 μg/m3, far exceeding the WHO-recommended annual mean of <10 μg/m3.
- Urban living can affect a person’s risk of CM disease in many different ways. In addition to increasing exposure to air pollution, a known risk factor, it often affects the major potentially modifiable drivers of CM risk factors, including tobacco use, occupation, alcohol use, obesity, physical inactivity, and unhealthy diet.
- An emerging body of evidence indicates a link between many of these factors—specifically obesity, physical inactivity, unhealthy diets, and air pollution—and the built environment. The WHO recently cited exposure to outdoor air pollution (6th) and physical inactivity (11th) among the top 15 risk factors for the global burden of disease in South Asian countries.
- Developing a model to estimate ambient exposure to Ambient Air Pollution (AAP) and health outcomes in Chennai and Delhi, India.
- Estimating association between exposure to AAP, temperature, CM risk factors and diseases, and characterizing susceptibility.
- Characterizing Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) methylation patterns associated with Air Pollution (AP) & investigate whether they predict AAP-mediated CM health effects.
- Estimating association between AAP & vitamin D levels.
- Expanding the exposure model Pan-India to utilize health data collected across additional cohorts.
- Characterizing personal exposure patters in urban settings, and how they are differentiated by location, socio-economic status (SES), occupation, mode of travel, etc.
Publications
Case Studies
Content to be added soon.
Photo Gallery
Announcements
Upcoming Short courses *
- 1. Short Course on Environmental Exposure Assessment
from 18th - 22nd June, 2018 at PHFI Gurgaon (Applications are open now; Deadline is 12 Noon, 18th May 2018)
Download Application Form
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