Feb 21: Designing Healthy Communities talk

We are what we eat…and what we build: Designing Healthy Communities

Cosponsored by the Carnegie Mellon Department of Chemistry, The Triple Helix, and Magee-Womens Hospital of UPMC Environmental Health Initiatives

9:30 am, Magee-Womens Hospital Auditorium.  This lecture is free and open to the public. Because of limited seating, an RSVP is required. Please email lpremo@andrew.cmu.edu to RSVP.  The talk was originally planned for the CMU campus, but because of the visit by Carnegie Mellon University's new President, this University Lecture will be held at 9:30 am at Magee-Womens Hospital Auditorium. (The auditorium is located on the zero level of the Hospital at 300 Halket Street.) Book signing to follow talk.

Dr. Richard J Jackson MD, MPH, FAAP, is a pediatrician who analyzes and addresses the impact of the environment on health, particularly children’s health. Dr. Jackson chaired the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Environmental Health and has done extensive work on pesticides, and in epidemiology, infectious diseases and toxicology. He was for nine years the Director of the US Centers for Disease Control National Center for Environmental Health. Over the past decade much of his work has focused on how the 'built environment', including architecture and urban planning, affects health. He has served on the Board of Directors of the American Institute of Architects and is an elected honorary member of the American Society of Landscape Architects. He has co-authored three books on Built Environment and Health and recently hosted a related US Public Television series, www.DesigningHealthyCommunities.org. He has a strong focus on sustainability and health including climate change issues. At UCLA Dr. Jackson is Professor and Chair of Environmental Health Sciences and has appointments in the Institute of the Environment & Sustainability, Urban Planning, and in Pediatrics in the School of Medicine. He received his degree in Medicine from the University of California, San Francisco and his Masters of Public Health in Epidemiology from the University of California, Berkeley. He is an elected member of the US National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine. 

This talk also is presented as the final lecture of the Imperfect Health exhibition at the Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon University, Purnell Center for the Arts.

Miller Gallery is proud to present the U.S. premiere of "Imperfect Health," curated by the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal and featuring projects and research by an international group of architects, designers, and artists. The works relate to broader health issues grouped in six themes: allergies, asthma, carcinogens and cancer treatment, disease and epidemics, obesity and movement, and aging and death.

The exhibition includes architecture, urban design and landscape design projects that incorporate medical issues and related concerns. Their new ideas and solutions are based on the optimistic premise that design has the capacity to deliver individual and collective well-being. Projects propose allergy-free gardens, more trees, cleaner air, soil remediation, and new quarantine spaces to prevent epidemic outbreaks. On the other hand, in addressing health issues, design also introduces new levels of complexity in projects that test industrial methods for food production, stairs that re-educate the obese and infirm, and the segregation of communities by age.