Clean Air Initiative scientific session slated for Sept. 21

UAB-hosted seminar looking at the effects of air quality on human health.

clean_air_webThe Environmental and Translational Medicine Program at the UAB School of Medicine will host a scientific and educational symposium called the Clean Air Initiative from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday, Sept. 21, 2012, at the UAB National Alumni Society House, 1301 10th Ave. South.

Pre-registration by Wednesday, Sept. 19, is required; seating is limited to 200 people. Physicians, medical students, health-care workers and the general public are welcome to attend. Continuing medical education credits will be available.

Scientists from the UAB schools of Medicine, Public Health and Engineering will be included in the Clean Air Initiative program. William J. Martin, M.D., associate director for disease prevention and health promotion at the Eunice Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development at the National Institutes of Health will deliver a plenary lecture titled “Prenatal and Early Childhood Exposure in Adult Diseases.”

Representatives from the Environmental Protection Agency, the Jefferson County Department of Health, the Birmingham mayor’s office and a local organization called Greater Birmingham Alliance to Stop Air Pollution will also speak.

The Environmental and Translational Medicine Program, which launched in early 2012, “puts UAB at the forefront of environmental medicine,” says Victor Thannickal, M.D., professor and director of the Division of Pulmonary, Allergy and Critical Care Medicine. “The program brings together experts from across UAB — physicians, public health professionals, engineers, chemists and biologists — in a wide-ranging collaboration of basic science, translational research and community outreach.”

The Clean Air Initiative “will improve lung health for those in central Alabama and it will add to the body of knowledge about the health impact of air pollution on people worldwide, a growing problem in industrialized and developing nations in which public policy promoting clean air often lags behind economic development,” says Veena Antony, M.D., director of the  Environmental and Translational Medicine Program and professor of medicine in the Division of Pulmonary, Allergy and Critical Care Medicine.