Students “foster community,” and more school news

Students in EHS 544, “Climate Equity and Health Policy Methods,” aren’t just producing research, they're co-developing actual legislation with community partners — legislation that has been raised by the Connecticut General Assembly’s Public Health Committee.

“This is a crucial model that allows communities impacted by pollution, disease, poverty, and violence to take the leadership role in designing solutions to challenges they have diagnosed, with consistent support from EHS 544 students since 2023,” said Suzi Ruhl, JD, MPH, senior research scientist in Yale’s Child Study Center. Ruhl teaches EHS 544 and is a Yale Center on Climate Change and Health-affiliated faculty member.

The students’ community involvement advances the YSPH strategic plan in meaningful ways. It is a textbook example of the strategic priority to “create pathways for translating outstanding science into local and global health impact,” as well as to “foster interconnected, inclusive, and interdisciplinary public health communities, within and beyond Yale.”

For decades, the East End neighborhood of Bridgeport, Connecticut, has faced the environmental, health, and economic ordeal of the Mount Trashmore waste dump. The community members, supported by their Yale partners, and many levels of government, are securing remediation and transformation of the property into the Mount Growmore Hydroponic Farm, Wellness Campus, and Learning Center.

In addition to vigorous community support, the success of Mount Growmore is driven by the community’s application of Triple Bottom Line Justice (TBLJ), a framework spearheaded by Yale’s Elevate Policy Lab in the Child Study Center. TBLJ seeks to realize health, environmental, and economic justice by addressing adverse social determinants and root causes of health disparities.

Tania de Jesus Espinosa, PhD ’28, Yale School of Nursing, and an EHS 544 student testified for the bill. “As a nurse, I have seen how health is linked to the environment. However, there are challenges that are often addressed as silos,” she said. “This project changes that by operationalizing the Triple Bottom Line Justice framework, which focuses on the integration of rule of law, evidence-based interventions, and most of all, community engagement.”

Emily Goines, RN, BSN, MPH ’26, also testified. “I learned that after three decades of tirelessly advocating for their community, this once heavily contaminated three‐story abandoned waste dump is finally being transformed into a dynamic health and wellness campus that provides food security through a hydroponic farm, mental health services, a medical clinic, a learning center, and a safe place for children and families in the community.”

Yanran Zhou, MPH ’27, told the committee, “I cannot stress enough how interconnected the environment and our health are.” While Connecticut has seen a decrease in ground-level ozone and fine-particle pollution, “both still cause nearly 200 annual premature deaths in Connecticut because they can travel from other states,” she said.

The Mount Growmore project demonstrates how YSPH science is being translated into tangible change for a community facing harm. The Public Health Committee has issued a Joint Favorable Report recommending that its Raised Bill HB 5241, An Act Establishing a Triple Bottom Line Justice Demonstration Pilot Program, be taken up by the full General Assembly.

Read about the bill here.

Three years after a train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio in 2023, releasing vinyl chloride and other hazardous chemicals into the air and water, many residents still have questions about their health and water quality. In response, a new and unusual collaboration has emerged between the Yale School of Public Health and MAHA Ohio, a grassroots health advocacy network, bringing together scientific expertise and community leadership.

The partnership took shape when YSPH Dean Megan L. Ranney connected Dr. Nicole Deziel, PhD, MHS, associate professor of epidemiology, with Elizabeth Frost of MAHA Ohio. Frost invited Deziel, who was working on a research proposal to evaluate the impacts of the derailment, to join her in canvassing residents in East Palestine.

The exchange was immediate and mutual. After talking with residents, Deziel and colleagues reshaped their approach to the research proposal, elevating issues of data access and water quality. Frost, in turn, wrote a letter of support for Yale's grant application.

The MAHA-YSPH collaboration has resonated with the public, as evidenced by the guest essay, “What Happened When a MAHA Activist and a Yale Scientist Worked Together,” published in The New York Times in March.

Yale along with local partner Ohio Valley Allies secured $300,000 in funding for Year 1 to support its contributions to a broader $10 million National Institutes of Health-funded research program focused on the derailment. Other institutions include the University of Kentucky, which is leading a health study, and the University of Pittsburgh.

Deziel, alongside Yale School of the Environment colleagues Dr. Michelle Bell, PhD, Mary E. Pinchot Professor of Environmental Health, and Dr. James Saiers, PhD, Clifton R. Musser Professor of Hydrology, is surveying residents about water quality concerns and carrying out state-of-the-science modeling of groundwater flow to track how contaminants may have dispersed, and to identify which communities may need greater attention and testing.

The collaboration bridges gaps in trust of environmental data in service of a shared goal: real benefit to real communities. As Deziel said in The New York Times, "We can do the best studies and identify all these environmental problems, but if it doesn't lead to any change, it doesn't matter."

East Palestine is the immediate focus, but the collaboration it sparked reflects exactly what YSPH strives to build: a link between science and society, making public health foundational to communities everywhere.

The Yale School of Public Health’s Population Health Information and Visualization Exchange (PopHIVE) has partnered with Metopio, a national community health data automation platform, to make health data easier to use where it matters most: in decisions that affect patients, families, and local communities.

This partnership not only connects to the YSPH strategic priority to “shape the future of public health data science & artificial intelligence,” it moves the priority forward. The collaboration isn't just about producing sophisticated data science — it's about shaping how it's structured and used. The PopHIVE-Metopio partnership takes population health data out of academic and technical silos and puts it into the hands of local health departments, hospitals, and community organizations. This addresses equity issues: high-quality national data becomes actionable at the community level.

PopHIVE is a public-good platform that provides timely, trustworthy, de-identified population health data. It brings together information from clinical care, public health systems, and other community sources to help people understand what’s happening in their communities and respond faster to health concerns.

By integrating PopHIVE dashboards into a widely used national platform, YSPH isn't just contributing data — it's influencing the infrastructure through which community health decisions get made across the country. This influence on how data science tools are built and deployed is a meaningful example of how YSPH leads in this space.

Listening, community engagement, and communication are among the most crucial skills for professionals and students in public health today, Dean Megan L. Ranney, MD, MPH, said during a recent visit to the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

During the conversation with Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Dean Andrea Baccarelli, Ranney referenced the YSPH strategic priority to “enhance trust in the science and practice of public health," while modeling what it means to communicate science with clarity and credibility.

Baccarelli acknowledged an eroding trust in science and public health, asking Ranney how she interacts with “people who may hold different views about our work.”

Ranney said she welcomes the chance to talk with people who may not value public health. She compared it to defending a paper at a conference. When “someone asks us difficult questions, it sharpens our science and our argument.” By framing pushback from skeptics the same way scientists frame peer reviews, she offered students and faculty a constructive way to engage with public distrust.

“I feel the same way about having discussions with people who have different worldviews, different value systems,” Ranney said. “Part of my job as dean is to help shift people’s understanding of what public health is, what we do, and why it matters to the health of communities.”