Rachel Morello-Frosch
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 3919819 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Rachel Morello-Frosch |
| PRENOMES | Rachel |
| SOBRENOME | Morello-Frosch |
| ASSINATURA | MORELLO-FROSCH R |
| AFILIAÇÕES | Brown University |
| VERIFICADO | Não |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 35 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 376 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 34 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 2 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2001 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 10 |
Wildfire-specific fine particulate matter and preterm birth
Wildfires increasingly threaten oil and gas wells in the western United States with disproportionate impacts on marginalized populations
The western United States is home to most of the nation's oil and gas production and, increasingly, wildfires. We examined historical threats of wildfires for oil and gas wells, the extent to which wildfires are projected to threaten wells as climate change progresses, and exposure of human populations to these wells. From 1984-2019, we found that cumulatively 102,882 wells were located in wildfire burn areas, and 348,853 people were exposed (res…
Do small effects matter more in vulnerable populations? an investigation using Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (Echo) cohorts
Vulnerable sub-populations with greater baseline percentages at high risk fare worse when exposed to a small insult compared to the general population. This illustrates another facet of health disparity in vulnerable individuals
Neighborhood gentrification, displacement, and severe maternal morbidity in California
Gentrification, a racialized and profit-driven process in which historically disinvested neighborhoods experience an influx of development that contributes to the improvement of physical amenities, increasing housing costs, and the dispossession and displacement of existing communities, may influence the risk of severe maternal morbidity (SMM). Leveraging a racially diverse population-based sample of all live hospital births in California between…
Historical Redlining Is Associated with Present-Day Air Pollution Disparities in U.S. Cities
High Resolution Image Download MS PowerPoint Slide Communities of color in the United States are systematically exposed to higher levels of air pollution. We explore here how redlining, a discriminatory mortgage appraisal practice from the 1930s by the federal Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC), relates to present-day intraurban air pollution disparities in 202 U.S. cities. In each city, we integrated three sources of data: (1) detailed HOLC se…
The Drinking Water Tool
The Drinking Water Tool (DWT) is a community-driven online tool that provides diverse users with information about drinking water sources and threats to drinking water quality and access due to drought. Development of the DWT was guided by the Community Water Center (CWC) as part of the Water Equity Science Shop (WESS), a research partnership integrating elements of community-based participatory research and the European Science Shop model. The W…
Inequities in Drinking Water Quality Among Domestic Well Communities and Community Water Systems, California, 2011‒2019
Objectives. To evaluate universal access to clean drinking water by characterizing relationships between community sociodemographics and water contaminants in California domestic well areas (DWAs) and community water systems (CWSs). Methods. We integrated domestic well locations, CWS service boundaries, residential parcels, building footprints, and 2013–2017 American Community Survey data to estimate sociodemographic characteristics for DWAs and …
Redlines and Greenspace
Introduction: Redlining, a racist mortgage appraisal practice of the 1930s, established and exacerbated racial residential segregation boundaries in the United States. Investment risk grades assigned >80y ago through security maps from the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) are associated with current sociodemographics and adverse health outcomes. We assessed whether historical HOLC investment grades are associated with 2010 greenspace, a healt…
Associations between historical residential redlining and current age-adjusted rates of emergency department visits due to asthma across eight cities in California
Background Asthma disproportionately affects communities of colour in the USA, but the underlying factors for this remain poorly understood. In this study, we assess the role of historical redlining as outlined in security maps created by the Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC), the discriminatory practice of categorising neighbourhoods on the basis of perceived mortgage investment risk, on the burden of asthma in these neighbourhoods. Methods W…
Sea level rise and coastal flooding threaten affordable housing
The frequency of coastal floods around the United States has risen sharply over the last few decades, and rising seas point to further future acceleration. Residents of low-lying affordable housing, who tend to be low-income persons living in old and poor quality structures, are especially vulnerable. To elucidate the equity implications of sea level rise (SLR), we provide the first nationwide assessment of recent and future risks to affordable h…
A Pilot Biomonitoring Study of Cumulative Phthalates Exposure among Vietnamese American Nail Salon Workers
Many California nail salon workers are low-income Vietnamese women of reproductive age who use nail products daily that contain androgen-disrupting phthalates, which may increase risk of male reproductive tract abnormalities during pregnancy. Yet, few studies have characterized phthalate exposures among this workforce. To characterize individual metabolites and cumulative phthalates exposure among a potentially vulnerable occupational group of na…
The body language of place
Research on place and health has grown rapidly in recent years, including examining the physiological embodiment of place-based exposures. While this research continues to improve understanding of why place matters, there is particular need for work capable of revealing: 1) which places matter, i.e. spatially-specific notions of "place"); 2) how these places matter-processes and mechanisms of the physiological embodiment of place; and 3) potentia…
Research altruism as motivation for participation in community-centered environmental health research
Race, Ethnicity, Income Concentration and 10-Year Change in Urban Greenness in the United States
Background: Cross-sectional studies suggest urban greenness is unequally distributed by neighborhood demographics. However, the extent to which inequalities in greenness have changed over time remains unknown. Methods: We estimated 2001 and 2011 greenness using Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) satellite-derived normalized difference vegetative index (NDVI) in 59,483 urban census tracts in the contiguous U.S. We fit spatial er…
Chapter 8. Bending the Curve and Closing the Gap
Climate change is projected to cause widespread and serious harm to public health and the environment upon which life depends, unraveling many of the health and social gains of the last century. The burden of harm will fall disproportionately on the poorest communities, both in the U.S. and globally, raising urgent issues of “climate justice”. In contrast, strategies for climate action, including those of an institutional, and cultural nature, ha…
The Haves, the Have-Nots, and the Health of Everyone
A growing body of literature suggests that more unequal societies have more polluted and degraded environments, perhaps helping explain why more unequal societies are often less healthy. We summarize the mechanisms by which inequality can lead to environmental degradation and their relevance for public health. We review the evidence of a relationship between environmental quality and social inequality along the axes of income, wealth, political p…
Scientific contestations over “toxic trespass”
The Racial/Ethnic Distribution of Heat Risk–Related Land Cover in Relation to Residential Segregation
OBJECTIVE: We examined the distribution of heat risk-related land cover (HRRLC) characteristics across racial/ethnic groups and degrees of residential segregation. METHODS: Block group-level tree canopy and impervious surface estimates were derived from the 2001 National Land Cover Dataset for densely populated urban areas of the United States and Puerto Rico, and linked to demographic characteristics from the 2000 Census. Racial/ethnic groups in…
The Three Rs
In the last few decades, community-based participatory research (CBPR) has emerged as an important approach that links environmental health and justice advocates with research institutions to understand and address environmental health problems. CBPR has generally been evaluated for its impact on policy, regulation, and its support of community science. However, there has been less emphasis on assessing the ways in which CBPR (re)shapes and poten…
Contested illnesses
The politics and science of health and disease remain contested terrain. This interdisciplinary work engages with both public health policy and social science, asserting that science, activism and policy are not separate issues and showing how the contribution of environmental factors in disease is often overlooked
Reflexive Research Ethics for Environmental Health and Justice
Community-engaged research on environmental problems has reshaped researcher-participant relationships, academic-community interaction, and the role of community partners in human subjects protection and ethical oversight. We draw on our own and others' research collaborations with environmental health and justice social movement organizations to discuss the ethical concerns that emerge in community-engaged research. In this paper we introduce th…
Contested Illnesses
Setting the Stage: Introduction, Theory, Methods 1. Introduction: Environmental Justice and Contested Illnesses Rachel Morello-Frosch, Phil Brown, and Stephen Zavestoski 2. Embodied Health Movements Phil Brown, Rachel Morello-Frosch, Stephen Zavestoski, Sabrina McCormick, Brian Mayer, Rebecca Gasior Altman, Crystal Adams, Elizabeth Hoover, and Ruth Simpson 3. Qualitative Approaches in Environmental Health Research Phil Brown 4. Getting into the F…
Understanding The Cumulative Impacts Of Inequalities In Environmental Health
Racial or ethnic minority groups and low-income communities have poorer health outcomes than others. They are more frequently exposed to multiple environmental hazards and social stressors, including poverty, poor housing quality, and social inequality. Researchers are grappling with how best to characterize the cumulative effects of these hazards and stressors in order to help regulators and decision makers craft more-effective policies to addre…
Playing It Safe
Regulatory agencies, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) and state authorities like the California Air Resources Board (CARB), have sought to address the concerns of environmental justice (EJ) advocates who argue that chemical-by-chemical and source-specific assessments of potential health risks of environmental hazards do not reflect the multiple environmental and social stressors faced by vulnerable communities. We propo…
Disentangling the Exposure Experience
This article examines participants' responses to receiving their results in a study of household exposure to endocrine disrupting compounds and other pollutants. The authors study how the 'exposure experience'-the embodied, personal experience and understanding of chronic exposure to environmental pollutants-is shaped by community context and the report-back process itself. In addition, the authors investigate an activist, collective form of expo…
Environmental Justice and Southern California’s “Riskscape
Past research on “environmental justice” has often failed to systematically link hazard proximity with quantifiable health risks. The authors employ recent advances in air emissions inventories and modeling techniques to consider a broad range of outdoor air toxics in Southern California and to calculate the potential lifetime cancer risks associated with these pollutants. They find that such risks are attributable mostly to transportation and sm…
The Three Rs
In the last few decades, community-based participatory research (CBPR) has emerged as an important approach that links environmental health and justice advocates with research institutions to understand and address environmental health problems. CBPR has generally been evaluated for its impact on policy, regulation, and its support of community science. However, there has been less emphasis on assessing the ways in which CBPR (re)shapes and poten…
The Air Is Always Cleaner on the Other Side
Environmental justice advocates have recently focused attention on cumulative exposure in minority neighborhoods due to multiple sources of pollution. This article uses U.S. EPA’s National Air Toxics Assessment (NATA) for 1996 to examine environmental inequality in California, a state that has been a recent innovator in environmental justice policy. We first estimate potential lifetime cancer risks from mobile and stationary sources. We then cons…
Pollution Comes Home and Gets Personal
We report on interviews conducted with participants in a novel study about environmental chemicals in body fluids and household air and dust. Interviews reveal how personal and collective environmental history influence the interpretation of exposure data, and how participants fashion an emergent understanding of environmental health problems from the articulation of science and experience. To the illness experience literature, we contribute a fr…
A Lab of Our Own
There are challenges to the dominant research paradigm in breast cancer science. In the United States, science and social activism create paradigmatic shifts. Using interviews, ethnographic observations, and an extensive review of the literature, we create a three-dimensional model to situate changes in scientific controversy concerning environmental causes of breast cancer. We identify three paradigm challenges posed by activists and some scient…
Integrating Environmental Justice and the Precautionary Principle in Research and Policy Making
Two policy frameworks, environmental justice and the precautionary principle, have begun to transform traditional approaches to environmental policy making and community organizing related to public health. Despite having several important overlapping policy goals, little effort has been made to purposefully integrate these two frameworks. This article discusses preliminary research on environmental inequality in ambient air toxics exposures and …
Labor-Environmental Coalition Formation
This article examines the formation of a cross-movement coalition between elements of the labor and environmental movements in New Jersey. We explain the successful formation and initial political campaign of the New Jersey Work Environment Council with an expansion of the theoretical perspective of frame analysis. We propose a model of a coalition collective action frame that offers several important insights into the active role coalition actor…
Research altruism as motivation for participation in community-centered environmental health research
Reflexive Research Ethics for Environmental Health and Justice
Community-engaged research on environmental problems has reshaped researcher-participant relationships, academic-community interaction, and the role of community partners in human subjects protection and ethical oversight. We draw on our own and others' research collaborations with environmental health and justice social movement organizations to discuss the ethical concerns that emerge in community-engaged research. In this paper we introduce th…
Disentangling the Exposure Experience
This article examines participants' responses to receiving their results in a study of household exposure to endocrine disrupting compounds and other pollutants. The authors study how the 'exposure experience'-the embodied, personal experience and understanding of chronic exposure to environmental pollutants-is shaped by community context and the report-back process itself. In addition, the authors investigate an activist, collective form of expo…
The body language of place
Research on place and health has grown rapidly in recent years, including examining the physiological embodiment of place-based exposures. While this research continues to improve understanding of why place matters, there is particular need for work capable of revealing: 1) which places matter, i.e. spatially-specific notions of "place"); 2) how these places matter-processes and mechanisms of the physiological embodiment of place; and 3) potentia…
Linking Exposure Assessment Science With Policy Objectives for Environmental Justice and Breast Cancer Advocacy
Objectives. We compared an urban fence-line community (neighboring an oil refinery) and a nonindustrial community in an exposure study focusing on pollutants of interest with respect to breast cancer and environmental justice. Methods. We analyzed indoor and outdoor air from 40 homes in industrial Richmond, California, and 10 in rural Bolinas, California, for 153 compounds, including particulates and endocrine disruptors. Results. Eighty compound…
Improving Disclosure and Consent
The recent flood of research concerning pollutants in personal environmental and biological samples—blood, urine, breastmilk, household dust and air, umbilical cord blood, and other media—raises questions about whether and how to report results to individual study participants. Clinical medicine provides an expert-driven framework, whereas community-based participatory research emphasizes participants’ right to know and the potential to inform ac…
Inequities in Drinking Water Quality Among Domestic Well Communities and Community Water Systems, California, 2011‒2019
Objectives. To evaluate universal access to clean drinking water by characterizing relationships between community sociodemographics and water contaminants in California domestic well areas (DWAs) and community water systems (CWSs). Methods. We integrated domestic well locations, CWS service boundaries, residential parcels, building footprints, and 2013–2017 American Community Survey data to estimate sociodemographic characteristics for DWAs and …
Scientific contestations over “toxic trespass”
Environmental Justice and Southern California’s “Riskscape
Past research on “environmental justice” has often failed to systematically link hazard proximity with quantifiable health risks. The authors employ recent advances in air emissions inventories and modeling techniques to consider a broad range of outdoor air toxics in Southern California and to calculate the potential lifetime cancer risks associated with these pollutants. They find that such risks are attributable mostly to transportation and sm…
Environmental justice and regional inequality in southern California
Environmental justice offers researchers new insights into the juncture of social inequality and public health and provides a framework for policy discussions on the impact of discrimination on the environmental health of diverse communities in the United States. Yet, causally linking the presence of potentially hazardous facilities or environmental pollution with adverse health effects is difficult, particularly in situations in which diverse po…
Integrating Environmental Justice and the Precautionary Principle in Research and Policy Making
Two policy frameworks, environmental justice and the precautionary principle, have begun to transform traditional approaches to environmental policy making and community organizing related to public health. Despite having several important overlapping policy goals, little effort has been made to purposefully integrate these two frameworks. This article discusses preliminary research on environmental inequality in ambient air toxics exposures and …
The Air Is Always Cleaner on the Other Side
Environmental justice advocates have recently focused attention on cumulative exposure in minority neighborhoods due to multiple sources of pollution. This article uses U.S. EPA’s National Air Toxics Assessment (NATA) for 1996 to examine environmental inequality in California, a state that has been a recent innovator in environmental justice policy. We first estimate potential lifetime cancer risks from mobile and stationary sources. We then cons…
The Environmental “Riskscape” and Social Inequality
BACKGROUND: Research indicates that the double jeopardy of exposure to environmental hazards combined with place-based stressors is associated with maternal and child health (MCH) disparities. OBJECTIVE AND DISCUSSION: Our aim is to present evidence that individual-level and place-based psychosocial stressors may compromise host resistance such that environmental pollutants would have adverse health effects at relatively lower doses, thus partial…
A Lab of Our Own
There are challenges to the dominant research paradigm in breast cancer science. In the United States, science and social activism create paradigmatic shifts. Using interviews, ethnographic observations, and an extensive review of the literature, we create a three-dimensional model to situate changes in scientific controversy concerning environmental causes of breast cancer. We identify three paradigm challenges posed by activists and some scient…
School Custodians and Green Cleaners
Coalitions between labor unions and environmental organizations often dissolve in class tensions that appear to force unions to choose between job security and occupational or environmental health. This article examines a successful blue—green coalition that worked to substitute cleaning products used in Boston public schools with safer alternatives. The coalition succeeded in part through the role of bridge builders, who unified a diverse group …
Improving Disclosure and Consent
The recent flood of research concerning pollutants in personal environmental and biological samples—blood, urine, breastmilk, household dust and air, umbilical cord blood, and other media—raises questions about whether and how to report results to individual study participants. Clinical medicine provides an expert-driven framework, whereas community-based participatory research emphasizes participants’ right to know and the potential to inform ac…
Pollution Comes Home and Gets Personal
We report on interviews conducted with participants in a novel study about environmental chemicals in body fluids and household air and dust. Interviews reveal how personal and collective environmental history influence the interpretation of exposure data, and how participants fashion an emergent understanding of environmental health problems from the articulation of science and experience. To the illness experience literature, we contribute a fr…
Linking Exposure Assessment Science With Policy Objectives for Environmental Justice and Breast Cancer Advocacy
Objectives. We compared an urban fence-line community (neighboring an oil refinery) and a nonindustrial community in an exposure study focusing on pollutants of interest with respect to breast cancer and environmental justice. Methods. We analyzed indoor and outdoor air from 40 homes in industrial Richmond, California, and 10 in rural Bolinas, California, for 153 compounds, including particulates and endocrine disruptors. Results. Eighty compound…
Labor-Environmental Coalition Formation
This article examines the formation of a cross-movement coalition between elements of the labor and environmental movements in New Jersey. We explain the successful formation and initial political campaign of the New Jersey Work Environment Council with an expansion of the theoretical perspective of frame analysis. We propose a model of a coalition collective action frame that offers several important insights into the active role coalition actor…
Contested Illnesses
Setting the Stage: Introduction, Theory, Methods 1. Introduction: Environmental Justice and Contested Illnesses Rachel Morello-Frosch, Phil Brown, and Stephen Zavestoski 2. Embodied Health Movements Phil Brown, Rachel Morello-Frosch, Stephen Zavestoski, Sabrina McCormick, Brian Mayer, Rebecca Gasior Altman, Crystal Adams, Elizabeth Hoover, and Ruth Simpson 3. Qualitative Approaches in Environmental Health Research Phil Brown 4. Getting into the F…
Understanding The Cumulative Impacts Of Inequalities In Environmental Health
Racial or ethnic minority groups and low-income communities have poorer health outcomes than others. They are more frequently exposed to multiple environmental hazards and social stressors, including poverty, poor housing quality, and social inequality. Researchers are grappling with how best to characterize the cumulative effects of these hazards and stressors in order to help regulators and decision makers craft more-effective policies to addre…
Playing It Safe
Regulatory agencies, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) and state authorities like the California Air Resources Board (CARB), have sought to address the concerns of environmental justice (EJ) advocates who argue that chemical-by-chemical and source-specific assessments of potential health risks of environmental hazards do not reflect the multiple environmental and social stressors faced by vulnerable communities. We propo…
Disentangling the Exposure Experience
This article examines participants' responses to receiving their results in a study of household exposure to endocrine disrupting compounds and other pollutants. The authors study how the 'exposure experience'-the embodied, personal experience and understanding of chronic exposure to environmental pollutants-is shaped by community context and the report-back process itself. In addition, the authors investigate an activist, collective form of expo…
Contested illnesses
The politics and science of health and disease remain contested terrain. This interdisciplinary work engages with both public health policy and social science, asserting that science, activism and policy are not separate issues and showing how the contribution of environmental factors in disease is often overlooked
Reflexive Research Ethics for Environmental Health and Justice
Community-engaged research on environmental problems has reshaped researcher-participant relationships, academic-community interaction, and the role of community partners in human subjects protection and ethical oversight. We draw on our own and others' research collaborations with environmental health and justice social movement organizations to discuss the ethical concerns that emerge in community-engaged research. In this paper we introduce th…
The Racial/Ethnic Distribution of Heat Risk–Related Land Cover in Relation to Residential Segregation
OBJECTIVE: We examined the distribution of heat risk-related land cover (HRRLC) characteristics across racial/ethnic groups and degrees of residential segregation. METHODS: Block group-level tree canopy and impervious surface estimates were derived from the 2001 National Land Cover Dataset for densely populated urban areas of the United States and Puerto Rico, and linked to demographic characteristics from the 2000 Census. Racial/ethnic groups in…
The Three Rs
In the last few decades, community-based participatory research (CBPR) has emerged as an important approach that links environmental health and justice advocates with research institutions to understand and address environmental health problems. CBPR has generally been evaluated for its impact on policy, regulation, and its support of community science. However, there has been less emphasis on assessing the ways in which CBPR (re)shapes and poten…
The Haves, the Have-Nots, and the Health of Everyone
A growing body of literature suggests that more unequal societies have more polluted and degraded environments, perhaps helping explain why more unequal societies are often less healthy. We summarize the mechanisms by which inequality can lead to environmental degradation and their relevance for public health. We review the evidence of a relationship between environmental quality and social inequality along the axes of income, wealth, political p…
Scientific contestations over “toxic trespass”
Chapter 8. Bending the Curve and Closing the Gap
Climate change is projected to cause widespread and serious harm to public health and the environment upon which life depends, unraveling many of the health and social gains of the last century. The burden of harm will fall disproportionately on the poorest communities, both in the U.S. and globally, raising urgent issues of “climate justice”. In contrast, strategies for climate action, including those of an institutional, and cultural nature, ha…
Race, Ethnicity, Income Concentration and 10-Year Change in Urban Greenness in the United States
Background: Cross-sectional studies suggest urban greenness is unequally distributed by neighborhood demographics. However, the extent to which inequalities in greenness have changed over time remains unknown. Methods: We estimated 2001 and 2011 greenness using Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) satellite-derived normalized difference vegetative index (NDVI) in 59,483 urban census tracts in the contiguous U.S. We fit spatial er…
Research altruism as motivation for participation in community-centered environmental health research
The body language of place
Research on place and health has grown rapidly in recent years, including examining the physiological embodiment of place-based exposures. While this research continues to improve understanding of why place matters, there is particular need for work capable of revealing: 1) which places matter, i.e. spatially-specific notions of "place"); 2) how these places matter-processes and mechanisms of the physiological embodiment of place; and 3) potentia…
Environmental Justice and Health Disparities (23 obras) · Political science (22 obras) · Environmental health (19 obras) · Geography (18 obras) · Medicine (18 obras) · Sociology (15 obras) · Environmental justice (10 obras) · Climate Change and Health Impacts (9 obras) · Air Quality and Health Impacts (8 obras) · Law (8 obras)