Climate Change is Among the Greatest Challenges Facing Humanity 

The Department of Population and Public Health Sciences at Keck School of Medicine of USC presents a Grand Rounds in Population and Public Health Sciences event:
Climate Change is Among the Greatest Challenges Facing Humanity: The Responses Must Benefit All People and the Natural World
with Richard Joseph Jackson, MD, MPH, FAAP, HonAIA, HonFASLA
Event Description:
21st century Americans must increasingly cope with “modern” life compounded by the inescapable effects of a heating planet: increased heat waves and febrile oceans, inexorable storm violence and lost insurance, wildfires and smoke-filled air, and frightening asocial behavior and an epidemic of loneliness. Jackson will explore some of the underlying forces and reflect on physical environment changes that can deliver more health and, yes, perhaps happiness.
About the speaker:
Richard J. Jackson, MD, MPH, FAAP, HonAIA, HonFASLA is Professor emeritus at the Fielding School of Public Health at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he was Department Chair in Environmental Health Sciences. A pediatrician, he served as State Health Officer for the California Health Department and as Director of the CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health for 9 years, for which he received the Presidential Distinguished Service Award. He was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2011 and has been leading its Health and Climate Interest Group since 2019. Jackson was instrumental in establishing the California Birth Defects Monitoring Program and in the creation of state and national laws to reduce risks from pesticides, especially to farm workers and to children. While at CDC he established major environmental public health programs and instituted the federal effort to “biomonitor” chemical levels in the U.S. population. He also co-authored the books: “Urban Sprawl and Public Health, Making Healthy Places”, and “Designing Healthy Communities,” for which he hosted a four-hour PBS series. Jackson has received many awards, such as the Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Public Health Law Association; the John Heinz Award for national leadership in the Environment; the Sedgwick Memorial Medal from the American Public Health Association, and the Henry Hope Reed Award for his contributions to Architecture and Planning. He and his spouse, Joan Guilford, live in Berkeley, California, and have three adult children and seven grandchildren.
Panel:
Moderator:
Rob McConnell, MD
Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences
Keck School of Medicine
Panelists:
Erika Garcia, PhD, MPH
Assistant Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences
Keck School of Medicine
Bhavna Sharma, PhD
Assistant Professor of Architecture
USC School of Architecture
John Wilson, PhD
Professor and Founding Director
USC Spatial Sciences Institute