Last fall, Ph.D. student Azmal Hossan was accepted to the Agents of Change in Environmental Justice Fellowship, a joint initiative of George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health and Environmental Health News.
This spring, his cohort began a nine-month program to receive rigorous training on writing and publishing academic pieces on environmental health and environmental justice.
Environmental Health News featured Azmal and his colleagues in the following article by Brian Bienkowski and Ami Zota.
Agents of Change: New fellows focused on justice and diversity in science
Meet our third group of fellows, who bring a fresh vision for the future of science communication and sustain the momentum of our growing program.
The Agents of Change in Environmental Justice program is excited to announce our third group of fellows.
The mission of our program, which began in 2019, is to empower emerging leaders from historically excluded backgrounds in science and academia to reimagine solutions for a just and healthy planet.
Our vision is to foster a new cadre of diverse and inclusive leaders in environmental justice who can help create systemic change by integrating the best available science and technology with the intergenerational knowledge of communities who have been disproportionately harmed by environmental degradation and historically excluded from decision-making because of racism, classism, and other systems of oppression.
Related: Listen to the Agents of Change podcast
The new cohort includes scientists and scholars who have been marginalized and many of them have experienced multiple forms of oppression. The fellowship— via podcasts, first-person essays, and social media—aims to get their voices and ideas out to the world, and help bridge their science and lived experience to bring forward bold new ideas in the environmental health and justice fields.
Past and current fellows from the program continue to leave their mark on science, policy, advocacy, and communication:
- Our podcast has been listened to by thousands, and our essays’ readership—more than a million views—continues to grow;
- Essays and podcasts have been incorporated into university courses and syllabi;
- Fellows have been invited to speak at universities and prominent institutions including Harvard University, MIT, University of Michigan, Columbia University, University of Texas, The Royal Society of Medicine, Health Effects Institute, and many others;
- Fellows were featured in the 1000 Inspiring Black Scientists in America and 40 under 40 Leaders in Health by the National Minority Quality Forum;
- Fellow are publishing exciting new science in high impact journals such as Environmental Health Perspectives, Nature Communications, and JAMA Internal Medicine
- Fellows are taking on leadership positions in scientific journals, professional organizations, and non-profit organizations.
And we’re just getting started.
We are proud of what the program has accomplished, but we want to take this further. And with our newest group of fellows, we plan to do just that—by bringing you more of their science, their ideas, and their stories.
Our new fellows:
- Annie Hoang, MPH: MD candidate at the University of California, San Francisco
- Azmal Hossan: PhD student in Sociology and National Research Trainee in Interdisciplinary Training, Education and Research in Food-Energy-Water Systems at Colorado State University
- Carlos Gould: PhD candidate in Environmental Health Sciences at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health
- Cielo Sharkus: PhD candidate in Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Amherst
- Daniel Carrión, PhD, MPH: Postdoctoral Fellow at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
- Enjoli Hall, MUP: PhD student in Urban Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Gavin Rienne, MPH: Epidemiology & Biostatistics PhD candidate at the University of Kentucky College of Public Health
- Lariah Edwards, PhD: Postdoctoral scientist working jointly at the George Washington School of Public Health and the Environmental Defense Fund
- Lorraine N. Vélez-Torres, MPH: Microbiology PhD Candidate at the University of Puerto Rico – Medical Sciences Campus
- Rodrigo Alatriste-Diaz: PhD candidate in Development Sociology at Cornell University and researcher at UC Merced’s Community and Labor Center
- Tatiana (Tots) Height, MCRP, CNP: EdD candidate in the Agricultural and Extension Education program at NC State University
- Theresa C. Guillette, PhD: ORISE Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Center for Public Health and Environmental Assessment at the EPA in Research Triangle Park, NC