For the past decade, I have conducted research with a prospective children’s cohort of 500 children enrolled in a randomized stove intervention trial in rural Guatemala (RESPIRE/CRECER studies, UC Berkeley http://ehs.sph.berkeley.edu/guat/) which measured the impact of household air pollutants from indoor cooking fires on childhood pneumonia and low birth weight.

My current research interests are to expand the evidence of an association between low birth weight, decreased anthropometric growth (primarily stunting and wasting), and delayed neurodevelopment among neonates and young children who are heavily exposed to air pollutants from wood-fueled cook stoves in resource-limited countries.  While my primary exposure of interest is household air pollution from solid fuel cook-stoves, to which half of the world’s population is highly exposed, other causative and/or contributing factors are also be explored.

Exposure-disease-stress model for environmental health disparities, quantitative statistical methods. 

Together with UCSF faculty and midwifery students, we conducted a training of local traditional birth attendants to assess newborn gestational age and weighing and measuring newborns.  See FHCN Fall 2009 department newsletter at http://nurseweb.ucsf.edu/fhcn/fhcn-09fa.pdf for more details.

I am a member of the Global Health Sciences faculty and received a research award to investigate the breadth and depth of environmental health nursing curricula at Schools of Nursing and Midwifery in Latin America.  I am currently working with faculty at a nursing school in Northern Peru.

In 2011, I was awarded a UCSF CTSI KL2 award to conduct pilot work on neurodevelopment and growth of infants exposed pre-natally and post-natally to household air pollution.

I am conducting a population-based research to examine the perception of environmental risk among vulnerable populations domestically. This research study on health equity and social determinants of health is targeting underserved Hawaiian communities in Oahu.