Climate Change and Global Public Health

Kent E. Pinkerton, PhD, is a Professor in the Department of Pediatrics, School of Medicine and Professor In-Residence, Department of Anatomy, Physiology and Cell Biology, School of Veterinary Medicine at UC Davis.  He is also Director of the Center for Health and the Environment at the John Muir Institute of the Environment.  Dr. Pinkerton’s research is on health effects of environmental air pollutants on lung structure and function, the interaction of gases and airborne particles within specific sites and cell populations of the lungs in acute and chronic lung injury, and the effects of environmental tobacco smoke on lung growth and development.  He is also a member of the Assembly for Environmental and Occupational Health of the American Thoracic Society.

William N. Rom, MD, MPH, is the Sol and Judith Bergstein Professor of Medicine and Environmental Medicine, Emeritus.  He is currently Research Scientist at NYU School of Global Public Health. He teaches Climate Change and Global Public Health and Environmental Health in a Global World.  He is the former Director of the NYU Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine and Bellevue Chest Service (1989-2014). The Division has 75 full-time faculty and over 25 fellows. His research is on early detection of lung cancer, environmental lung disease, TB/AIDS, and air pollution. He and his faculty have been awarded over $142M in NIH and CDC grants over the years. He is editor of 4 editions of Environmental and Occupational Medicine and 2 editions of Tuberculosis. He has published over 350 peer reviewed articles. He was Founder and former Chair of the American Thoracic Society's Environmental Health Policy Committee that advocates science-based air pollution standards. He has been a Fellow in the Department of Interior on National Parks and was a Senior Investigator at the NHLBI, NIH for 6 years deciphering the mechanisms of asbestosis. He was a Legislative Fellow forSenator Hillary Rodham Clinton and wrote the Family Asthma Bill, the Caribbean Wilderness Act, World Trade Center health-related dust programs, and the National Environmental Public Health Tracking Bill. He was the Founder and Director of the Rocky Mountain Center for Occupational and Environmental Health at the University of Utah.