Toxic chemicals are dangerous no matter who you are. But, certain populations are more vulnerable and more likely to be impacted by toxics than others. In this series, doctors, scientists, and environmental justice practitioners explain who is most at risk of toxic exposure and the conditions that have created this inequity.
Contributors
Ogonnaya Dotson-Newman
Program Officer, Environment, The JPB Foundation
Full Bio
Ogonnaya Dotson Newman is a senior program officer in the Environment program at The JPB Foundation. Ogonnaya manages the environmental health portfolio focused on detoxifying natural systems and the build environment by eliminating indoor and outdoor pollutants. Ogonnaya comes to JPB with years of experience in community-based participatory research, partnership and collaboration for organizing around complex environmental issues and environmental justice.
Most recently, Ogonnaya was the Assistant Director of Public Housing and Health based at the New York City Housing Authority and the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Ogonnaya holds a Master of Public Health with a focus on Environmental Health and a certificate in Health Geoinformatics.
Dr. Maida Galvez
Professor, Departments of Environmental Medicine and Public Health & Pediatrics
Full Bio
Maida P. Galvez, MD, MPH, FAAP is a pediatrician and Professor in the Departments of Environmental Medicine & Public Health and Pediatrics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai where she is Founding Director of the New York State Children’s Environmental Health Center —the first state-wide, publicly funded model for children’s environmental health clinical services in the United States. She also serves as Director of the Region 2 Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Unit, a US Environmental Protection Agency and Centers for Disease Control serving New Jersey, New York, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands. Dr. Galvez works to translate emerging research into programs and policies that prevent and reduce environmental exposures for children, their families, and their communities.
Laura Vandenberg
Assistant Professor and Graduate Program Director, University of Massachusetts School of Public Health and Health Sciences Department of Environmental Science
Full Bio
Laura Vandenberg is an Assistant Professor and the Graduate Program Director for the Environmental Health Sciences Department at University of Massachusetts Amherst's School of Public Health and Health Sciences. Her research explores how early life exposures to chemicals can predispose individuals to diseases that manifest later in life, and on how current risk assessment practices can be improved in the study and regulation of endocrine disruptors. She was a Center for Research on Family’s Research Scholar in 2015-16, and has published many articles on endocrinology and toxicology in peer-reviewed science journals. Her work is funded by the National Institutes of Health and National Cancer Institute. She holds a Bachelor’s in Biology from Cornell University and a PhD in Molecular and Developmental Biology from Tufts University School of Medicine.
Anasa Scott-Laude
Program Director of Fellowships, Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership at the City College of New York
Full Bio
Anasa Laude leverages her background in higher education to provide rare insight and analysis to pressing community needs, serving as a research consultant on economic opportunity and climate change impact studies at the Urban Technical Assistance Project. For over 10 years, Anasa served in teaching and leadership roles in higher education including the graduate Strategic Design and Management at Parsons The New School University program, and the Environmental Economics Program at the City College of NY (CCNY).
Anasa was the director of fellowships at the Colin Powell School, where she also served as Leader in Residence. She was the co-founder and Managing Director of Greenproofing, Inc. a sustainable business consultancy, founded in partnership with faculty at the City College of NY.
Anasa has served as an advisor to several entrepreneurship hubs including Juntobot, the Zahn Innovation Center. She received a BA in Economics and an MA in Finance from CCNY. She sits on the board of NY Women’s Chamber of Commerce. Anasa is a certified LEED Green Associate with the US Green Building Council.