School of forestry and environmental studies

School Notes: School of the Environment
January/February 2018

Ingrid C. “Indy” Burke | http://environment.yale.edu

Data-Driven Yale receives UN award

A team from the Yale Data-Driven Environmental Solutions Group (Data-Driven Yale), an F&ES-based project working at the intersection of data science and policy, was awarded the inaugural prize in the UN Data for Climate Action Challenge for linking climate change to sustainable development goals. The team’s winning analysis explored air pollution’s impact on consumer spending, visualizing its results in a series of interactive maps and case studies. Team members John Brandt ’19MESc, Matthew Moroney ’18MEM, and Sophie Janaskie ’18MEM joined Angel Hsu, assistant professor at F&ES and Yale-NUS College and director of Data-Driven Yale, in accepting the award during the COP23 climate conference in Bonn, Germany. Data-Driven Yale is an interdisciplinary and international group of researchers, scientists, programmers, and visual designers that uses innovative data analytics to distill signals from large-scale and unconventional datasets and develop policy solutions to contemporary environmental problems.

Study examines health disparities in seniors

A research team led by F&ES Professor Michelle Bell has received a $4 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to examine environmental health disparities within the US senior population. Using a wide range of datasets, including Medicare claims, Bell and colleagues from Rice and Harvard universities will investigate how environmental and socioeconomic status factors jointly contribute to health disparities among people aged 65 and over, with a focus on Michigan and North Carolina. Environmental health risks, such as air pollution, can be exacerbated in communities facing socioeconomic “stressors”—such as deteriorating housing, poor health care, crime, and poverty. “We’re focusing on an older population not because other groups aren’t important, but because this particular group is already especially vulnerable to health problems and environmental factors,” said Bell, the Mary E. Pinchot Professor of Environmental Health at F&ES and primary investigator of the study.

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