Working to save lives through prevention and policy, eastern African researchers trained with expert environmental health scientists at USC to lay the groundwork for air pollution and health research in their countries.
Lead investigators from Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda are collaborating with USC and Ethiopia’s Addis Ababa University to establish the Eastern Africa Global Environmental and Occupational Health Hub — one of only seven in the world. Housed in Ethiopia, it is a research and training collaboration funded by a five-year $3 million National Institutes of Health-Fogarty grant awarded last year.
Data proving the adverse health effects of smog-choked urban centers and indoor cook stoves, for example, are vital to prove the urgency — and necessity — of government action, according to USC principal investigators Kiros Berhane, professor and director of graduate programs in biostatistics and epidemiology, and Jonathan Samet, director of the USC Institute for Global Health and holder of the Flora L. Thornton chair in the Department of Preventive Medicine. Both teach at the Keck School of Medicine of USC.
