Research Signature Areas
Environmental Impacts on Human Health
Health and Well-Being for All
College of Health Strategic Plan, 2025-2030
Environments play major roles in influencing our health.
Faculty address the health effects of multiple adverse environmental exposures (e.g., noise, air and water pollution, aeroallergens, radon), climate change, and natural disasters. Others focus on the effects of the built environment on health behaviors and outcomes (e.g., asthma, cancer, cardiometabolic risk factors and diseases, food insecurity, mental health).
Collaborating across disciplines and leveraging the university’s diverse strengths, our researchers are developing prevention and resilience solutions and translating evidence-informed policies, programs, and practices to communities.
We focus on health disparities and inequities, with sensitivity to how impacts stem from and are experienced in social environments. These impacts are often more severe for those with fewer resources, particularly in communities of color and marginalized groups and in low-income settings and populations.
We integrate the expertise of faculty from multiple disciplines and fields, including public health, kinesiology, nutrition, and human development and family sciences.
Publications
Recent environmental impacts on human health publications
(This is not an exhaustive list. Visit individual faculty profiles for more extensive lists of their publications.)
2025
2024
News and stories
Recent environmental impacts on human health news and stories.
His successful application, titled "Investigating Radon’s Role in the Incidence and Mortality of Central Nervous System and Other Non-Pulmonary Cancers," will support his research in this area.
FLIPP delivers life jackets to 440+ fishermen! Partners celebrate success. Research assesses usage & feedback on comfort/utility throughout the season. Coastal news highlights community collaboration.
Faculty from the College of Health were interviewed on the "Environmental Health Chat" podcast, hosted by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.
New OSU-led study finds planned home births are as safe as birth center births for low-risk pregnancies, challenging traditional views and prompting calls for better hospital transfer experiences.
The study is the first to assess built environment characteristics through photographs in diverse global communities to examine how the built environment is associated with body mass index and obesity.
Study reveals link between childhood leukemia and radon exposure, even below EPA guidelines, in 18-year analysis across 727 U.S. counties.