Co-Presenter A/Prof Thomas Astell-Burt is a Founding Co-Director of the PowerLab and an NHMRC Boosting Dementia Research Leadership Fellow. Thomas will outline recently published findings by the PowerLab in the area of environment and population health in Australia and overseas.

Dr Danelle Lobdell is an epidemiologist with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in the Office of Research and Development. She received her M.S. in Natural Sciences and her Ph.D. in Epidemiology and Community Medicine from the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York. Dr Lobdell’s current research involves the development of environmental public health indicators that can be tracked over time. She recently released publically the Environmental Quality Index 2000-2005 for all counties in the U.S. She also has several research projects funded through the Regional Applied Research Effort (RARE) that focus on the U.S. EPA’s Regional research needs for communities. Dr Lobdell has a strong research interest in the area of reproductive, perinatal, and children’s health outcomes.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (U.S. EPA) mission is to protect human health and the environment. Those not familiar with U.S. EPA’s mission often do not realize that U.S. EPA is a public health agency.

In this presentation, Dr Danelle Lobdell will provide an overview of the environmental public health research she conducts at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. She will focus her presentation on the Environmental Quality Index her team has developed and now uses to explore how overall environmental Quality (air, water, land, built and sociodemographic environments) affect health outcomes. She will also describe community research projects she has conducted in partnership with U.S. EPA’s Regional Offices that include exposures related to air and water. This abstract does not necessarily reflect EPA policy.