Research Hubs

With a projected 10 million deaths per year, antimicrobial resistant pathogens are predicted to be the leading cause of death worldwide by 2050. Pharmaceutical development cannot keep pace with the problem. To combat these threats before they reach cities, hospitals, and homes, we work with international partners such as the icddr,b seeking out and deterring resilient pathogens in the farms, aquacultures, wastewaters, and other ecologies from which they spread.

The leading environmental health hazard is air pollution. While this and other toxins in food and the environment have proven especially threatening in the first 1,000 days of life, little is known about the cumulative, life-course effects on physical and mental health. To illuminate the “exposome” – the totality of cultural, nutritional, and environmental exposures – we investigate intersections between biomarkers and geo-markers, daily routines and family histories, prenatal care and life-long habits.

Despite producing 70% of the world’s food, small-scale farmers remain undernourished, as do their neighbors throughout the Global South. Improving food security cannot be done by increasing agricultural production alone; a systems approach is needed to advance access to nutritious, culturally meaningful food. To cultivate food equity, we work with both local stakeholders, such as farm operators, and international influencers, like the UNFAO, studying, developing, and implementing cross-sector policies-in-action.

The 800 million people with disabilities living in low- and middle-income countries experience inequities in access to education, employment, and social services. While unjust policies and social stigmas impede progress, the lack of safe and accessible water, sanitation, and hygiene facilities is crippling. To empower girls, children with disabilities, and other vulnerable populations toward self-efficacy, we collaborate with global organizations like UNICEF, building socially inclusive policies, tools, and environments.

Though people have migrated for centuries, current local and global crises have triggered forced movement on a scale not witnessed since World War II (Lemke, 2017). The influx of refugees to host nations has generated nationalist supremacy discourses and polarized cultural debates that both “welcome” and “reject” newcomers, including within the United States. This demands that researchers and practitioners concerned with increasing equity for refugees and other displaced persons, to push disciplinary boundaries, as well as existent policy and practices in ways that responsibly challenge those conditions that permit forced movement to continue. To do so, the Refugee Health and Well-Being Big Ideas Team cultivates co-constructed research-policy-practice partnerships at local, national, and international levels with the aim of supporting and growing equitable resettlement processes for displaced children, adults, and families.

Approximately 17,000 children die worldwide every day, 44% of which occur in the first month of life, often from preventable causes. Meanwhile up to 1 billion children and youth aged 2–17 years experience physical, sexual, or emotional violence or neglect, which has ramifications for physical and mental health well into adulthood. Effective medical, behavioral, and social interventions exist, yet scalability – working across borders and sectors – remains a challenge. To nurture vulnerable children and adolescents into healthy adulthood, we join global initiatives, such as those led by USAID, helping to deliver effective practices and policies that improve child and adolescent health and wellbeing.

The Community for Global Health Equity also supports faculty whose work more broadly influence the policies, systems, and norms that reinforce inequities. Their work enhances the work of our Big Ideas teams and ensures we are thinking about and acting upon the true causes of health inequity.