Climate and Health Graduate Research Assistant Lauren Johnson at The George Washington University’s Milken Institute School of Public Health was awarded the American Public Health Association Student Assembly 2021 Trong D. Nguyen Memorial Award.
APHA’s Student Assembly recognized Ms. Johnson as a leader who has made a significant contribution to public health by promoting environmental justice. She was chosen based on an essay in which she described activities and steps she has undertaken to address environmental disparities in overburdened communities.
The award is given in honor of Trong D. Nguyen, a notable Canadian who served at Health Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada in a career dedicated to environmental health. He and his daughter were killed in an automobile crash in 2006.
Ms. Johnson’s interest in environmental health grew out of her studies in Earth and Planetary Science and Geochemistry as an Undergraduate at Washington University in St. Louis that led to teaching high school chemistry for Teach for America.
“When I graduated from college, I felt like I was missing the human impact of science which is why I did Teach for America. I thought my skills could be better served teaching others like me to study science to diversify the field,” said Ms. Johnson, a Black woman who described her undergraduate experience as socially isolating at a predominately white institution.
In Miami, where she taught high school, she saw the disproportionate impact hurricanes, flooding and other extreme weather conditions brought on by climate change had on the lives of her students, she said, “especially in inner city schools that had deteriorated infrastructure that were contaminated with black mold… and led to adverse outcomes such as asthma and pre diabetic issues, compounded by COVID.”
She is pursuing a Master of Public Health in Environmental Health Science and Policy at the Milken Institute SPH because she feels called to implement environmental justice on a national scale, realizing the health crises her students experienced were the result of policy failures.
As a Climate and Health Graduate Research Assistant working with Dr. Susan Anenberg, she is part of the NASA HAQAST project that aims to integrate satellite data into environmental justice mapping tools to identify communities that are disproportionately affected by environmental health risks, work that Ms. Johnson sees as part of her mission to empower disadvantaged communities to take back control of their lives.
At GW she founded the Environmental Justice Action Network (EJAN), a service and advocacy organization with more than 150 members, that has worked to clean up parks and streams in the District of Columbia’s Anacostia community; volunteered at the Franciscan Monastery urban gardens that donates thousands of pounds of produce to local families and food kitchens and partnered with the American Public Health Association’s National Public Health Week and the Natural Resources Defense Council to host a climate justice seminar that registered over 115 people.
“My main objective goes back to my experience with my former students in Florida,” Ms. Johnson said. “Although bright, I worry that because of the environment they grew up in and lack of resources they have that they may not reach their full potential. I do what I can to prioritize the lived experiences of those who are disproportionately affected by injustices.”