Kari Nadeau

Kari C. Nadeau is the Chair of the Department of Environmental Health at Harvard School of Public Health and John Rock Professor of Climate and Population Studies. She is also adjunct professor at Stanford University in the Department of Pediatrics. She practices Allergy, Asthma, Immunology in children and adults as a physician, and has published over 400 papers. Dr. Nadeau is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, the WHO Air Pollution and Health Scientific Advisory Group (SAG) and the U.S. EPA [https://www.epa.gov/children/chpac Children’s Health Protection Committee].

For more than 30 years, she has devoted herself to understanding how environmental and genetic factors affect the risk of developing human disease. Her laboratory has been studying pollution effects on children and adults. Many of the health issues involving individuals and the public are increasing because of air pollution and extreme weather conditions. She oversees a team working with a multidisciplinary group of community leaders, engineers, scientists, lawyers, and policy makers. Dr. Nadeau was appointed as a member of the U.S. Federal Wildfire Commission in 2022.

Dr. Nadeau works with other organizations and institutes across the world. She works with the WHO on a scoping review and report for health ministers and policy makers on wildland fires and/or air pollution: how to mitigate, adapt, and follow UN SDGs to create resiliency and co-benefits in communities, especially LMICs.

Dr. Nadeau and her team perform research in the prevention and therapy of disease. She also launched four biotech companies, and founded the [https://climatehealthequity.stanford.edu/ Climate Change and Health Equity Task Force] and started the Sustainability Health Seed Grant initiative and Climate Change and Health Fellowship program. She has served on the Scientific Advisory Board of the U.S. EPA.

She works as a member of the UNEA through Harvard to work on environmental health and planetary health governance and policy. She is also a member of the Center for the Early Development of the Child scientific committee at Harvard.

Dr. Nadeau is a Faculty Associate at The Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability and works with the [https://globalhealth.harvard.edu/ Harvard Global Health Initiative] and with the [https://fxb.harvard.edu/ FXB center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University]. She was the interim director of the [https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/c-change/ Harvard Center for Climate, Health and the Global Environment] until October 2024, when she was succeeded by Mary Rice. Through these programs Dr. Nadeau works directly with Environmental Justice, global, regional, and local communities.

Her research has pioneered the field of allergies, asthma, and immunology, specifically in food allergies, pollution-induced asthma, and COVID-19. Dr. Nadeau’s studies have demonstrated that exposures to water and air pollution can modify the DNA of all ages of individuals and can lead to respiratory, allergic, and immune disorders. Provided by Wikipedia