Francine Laden awarded Marianne Wessling-Resnick Memorial Mentoring Award at similar ceremony
November 22, 2022 – Ladies’s reproductive well being is harmed by endocrine-disrupting chemical substances referred to as plasticizers which can be utilized in shopper merchandise starting from cosmetics to meals packaging to plastics. Not solely that, however there are variations in publicity patterns that relate to race and ethnicity; for instance, research have proven that Black Individuals and Mexican Individuals have increased concentrations of those poisonous chemical substances of their our bodies.
This pioneering analysis is typical of the work executed within the Environmental Reproductive Justice Lab led by Harvard T.H. Chan College of Public Well being’s Tamarra James-Todd. She paperwork the impacts of dangerous chemical exposures and associated environmental well being disparities—and her work doesn’t finish there. She additionally brings the science into the group to make clear preventable dangers and present folks learn how to enhance their well being.
James-Todd, the Mark and Catherine Winkler Affiliate Professor of Environmental Reproductive Epidemiology, obtained the 2022 Alice Hamilton Award at a ceremony in Kresge cafeteria on November 17 for her management within the space of environmental publicity and girls’s well being.
Introduced yearly by the College’s Committee on the Development of Ladies College (CAWF), the Alice Hamilton award acknowledges a feminine school member for her influence in public well being and future promise. The award honors the reminiscence of Hamilton, a pioneer within the fields of toxicology and occupational well being and the primary lady appointed to the college at Harvard in 1919.
On the occasion, Dean Michelle Williams spoke about Hamilton’s path-breaking legacy in her discipline and at Harvard and praised James-Todd as a pioneering scholar with a resonant dedication to translating scientific analysis into motion.
“Like Alice, Tamarra believes that we completely should get tutorial analysis to the individuals who can most profit from its findings,” stated Williams. “Already, Tamarra’s understanding of the influence of poisonous chemical substances on ladies’s reproductive well being and long-term well being is advancing well being fairness and making exceptional impacts on the bottom.”
Along with her analysis accomplishments, James-Todd is understood for her dedication to scholarly activism. Just lately, she launched a brand new podcast, Magnificence + Justice, on the influence of the sweetness trade on well being fairness and social justice. She can be providing a brand new course this spring on environmental well being, literacy, and science communication, to create extra fluency round getting scientific findings to the general public.
To rebuild belief in public well being scholarship, lecturers should get exterior of the ivory tower, construct bridges into communities, and make science actual for folks, stated James-Todd throughout a strong acceptance lecture through which she urged students to not solely doc well being disparities but in addition work to search out options to scale back them. “Now we have to get past these doorways,” she stated. “The science must be broadened out to the group, the trade, authorities, educators, and most of the people.”
James-Todd wrapped up her remarks by invoking the College’s tagline, which seems prominently on a large banner on the again of the Kresge constructing. “I’d prefer to remind you to always remember what sits exterior this constructing: ‘Highly effective concepts for a more healthy world.’ That’s what Alice known as us to do. And I hope that you just too will see yourselves as advocates doing that work.”
One other award was additionally introduced on the ceremony. Francine Laden, professor of environmental epidemiology, obtained the Marianne Wessling-Resnick Memorial Mentoring Award for her dedication to service and mentorship. The award honors the reminiscence of Wessling-Resnick, who obtained the 2019 CAWF Mentoring Award simply six and a half months earlier than she handed away at 61.
Jennifer Ivers, affiliate dean for school affairs, praised Laden as a school member who, like Wessling-Resnick, has proven compassionate dedication to service and mentorship and a want to attach folks in ways in which strengthen them each individually and as a group.
– Meg Murphy
