Conducting policy relevant research to mitigate and prevent environmental health inequities

Mission:

The Payne-Sturges Environmental Health Systems and Policy Lab aims to address long standing environmental and occupational health inequities using traditional epidemiological, human health risk assessment and innovative systems science methods to improve policies that impact the health of communities and populations, especially vulnerable, low income and minority populations in urban and rural settings. Our work is guided by community-based participatory research principles and draws upon theories from social sciences. Through interdisciplinary research, integrated systems modeling, community engagement and student training in system dynamics, EHSP Lab informs actionable solutions for just and sustainable environmental health systems.

The work:

The dynamics of social inequities in rural and urban areas impact the environmental health of rural and urban residents through institutions, policies, practices, norms, and processes.  We use system dynamics, a systems science method that posits that the feedback structure of a system determines its behavior (e.g., accumulations and trends over time), to identify direct and indirect causal determinants of outcomes and provide insights for policy interventions. Current projects focus on the combined effects of environmental chemical contaminants and social stressors impacting children’s neurodevelopment and examining how the U.S. agricultural labor system routinely compromises the health of migrant and seasonal farmworkers.

The concept of cumulative risks/impacts represents the synergistic health effects of the accumulation of multiple harmful environmental exposures. Significant research investments have been made to develop methods to assess the combined effects of multiple chemical exposures, and literature on the cumulative health effects of joint exposure to chemical and social stressors is growing. However, little progress has been made to advance federal and state policy responses to scientific findings about cumulative impacts and risk. We use science policy archival research and content analysis, ethnographic research methods, and policy analysis to examine the scientific, social, and political framings of cumulative impacts and risk, and how they are understood and acted upon by legislators, environmental and public health agencies, business leaders, advocates, and other key stakeholders. Recent projects include examining the impasses at the Federal level and an analysis of past failures of the Maryland General Assembly to enact legislation on cumulative impacts. Current work is focused on approaches to counter narratives that prevent enactment of policy solutions to cumulative environmental health risks and impacts. 

We are extending our work using system dynamics to examine structural racism and its relationship to environmental inequities. Structural racism (SR) has been defined as “the macro level systems, social forces, institutions, ideologies, and processes that interact with one another to generate and reinforce inequities among racial/ethnic groups” (Gee and Ford 2011; Powell 2008).  A hallmark of the system dynamics (SD) approach is the integration of multiple sources of structural data to represent complex systems through the use of causal loop diagrams (CLDs) and other qualitative mapping approaches. Since summer 2021, we have facilitated seminars and workshops among researchers and experts in environmental exposures, child neurodevelopment, education, occupational health, labor law, environmental health policy, system dynamics modeling, and the study of structural racism to explore the contribution and potential application of system dynamics diagramming conventions to illuminate mechanisms and pathways of structural racism related to environmental and occupational health inequities. 


The EHSP Lab is invested in building capacity in system dynamics among the next generation of environmental health practitioners and researchers. We offer a graduate level course that advances public health students’ systems thinking abilities, with a focus on system dynamics (EHS 796). Students will develop their proficiency in identifying and describing system dynamics concepts and apply these concepts to tackle dynamic social problems with innovative and design driven transdisciplinary solutions.

Contact

people gathering and discussing

Department: Environmental Health Sciences
Director: Devon Payne-Sturges, DrPH 
Room Number: #6108  SPH II

Office Phone Number: (734) 764-3248    
Email: devonps@umich.edu

I welcome intellectually curious and motivated undergraduates, graduate students and post-docs to join the Environmental Health Systems and Policy Lab.  Students interested in a mentored independent research experience in environmental health and policy, please contact me directly. I also mentor students in the MPH and PhD in Environmental Health Sciences programs. For more information, please contact me directly.