Laura Gladson Defends Dissertation

Laura Gladson, Graduate Assistant in the Health, Environment, and Policy program, defended her doctoral dissertation, “Advancing Health Equity Using Satellite and Model Air Quality Data.” Her research demonstrates how increased resolution and coverage from satellites and models can push air-quality research into new domains, sources, and populations to target health-equity intersections. It entails four projects: 1) examining intra-urban exposures in California’s most disadvantaged communities; 2) creating a global air-quality index to communicate children’s respiratory-health risk; 3) quantifying the adverse health impacts and social disparities of wildland-fire air pollution in the United States; and 4) assessing air-pollution-related health risks in Quito and Rio de Janeiro. Her research was funded by NASA and the Environmental Defense Fund and conducted with their scientists and Latin American city managers; the American Thoracic Society (ATS); researchers from Columbia, Emory, and George Mason universities; the California Air Resources Board; and UNICEF. Her wildland-fire study is also included in the 5th annual “Health of the Air” report, a joint effort between the NYU Marron Institute and ATS.

Special thanks to her dissertation committee: Kevin Cromar (research advisor, NYU Marron Institute); Terry Gordon (committee chair, NYU Grossman School of Medicine, Department of Medicine); Bryan Duncan (NASA); Yunyao Li (George Mason University); and Andrea Titus (NYU Grossman School of Medicine, Department of Population Health).