SSI Brown Bag: The Global Burden of Disease-Pollution, Climate and Health Initiative: a Focus on the Potential Role of Spatial Sciences

Howard Hu, M.D., M.P.H., Sc.D. is the Flora L. Thornton Chair and Professor, KSOM Department of Preventive Medicine

Please join the USC Spatial Sciences Institute’s Brown Bag talk with Dr. Howard Hu, who joined the Department of Preventive Medicine, Keck School of Medicine of USC, as its new chair on July 1, 2020.

Register in advance for this meeting:
https://usc.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJIscuqsqjksG9YnVxO91UU9hXXK-RRaSVOt

The Global Burden of Disease Project (GBD), funded for over 2 decades by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is the largest scientific collaboration in the world and now a partnership with the World Health Organization.  It describes mortality and morbidity from major diseases, injuries and risk factors to health at global, national and regional levels. Examining trends from 1990 to the present and making comparisons across populations enables understanding of the changing health challenges facing people across the world in the 21st century and provides policy makers with the evidence to make key decisions as they pursue the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

In 2017, the Lancet Commission on Pollution and Health used GBD data to demonstrate that outdoor and indoor air pollution, radon, and lead were likely responsible for 3 times the annual deaths from tuberculosis, malaria, and HIV/AIDS combined.  In follow-up, Dr. Hu and colleagues initiated the GBD-Pollution, Climate and Health Initiative (GBD-PCHI), which aims to expand the GBD to include additional top-priority pollutants as well as climate change.

In this talk, Dr. Hu will describe the GBD-PCHI, now based at in the Keck/USC Department of Preventive Medicine, with a focus on the challenge of estimating human exposure to pollutants in low- and middle income countries with little data, and invite a discussion of the potential role of spatial sciences.  Dr. Hu will also briefly discuss the Department of Preventive Medicine’s nascent Pandemic Population Health Research Center and other collaboration opportunities.