Professor and EOH Chair Melissa Perry was recently inducted as Fellow of the prestigious Collegium Ramazzini. The international organization, which is headquartered in Italy, includes 180 members who are elected in recognition of their contributions to advancing occupational and environmental health.
“I’m honored to be a Fellow of this esteemed organization dedicated to the health of workers,” says Dr. Perry, whose research over the past decades at George Washington, Harvard, and Johns Hopkins Universities has drawn international attention to the health effects of pesticide exposure on farming communities, agricultural workers, and the general public. She has also developed engineering and behavioral interventions to address risks her work has identified for workers at meat-packing plants, construction sites, and agricultural operations.
Perry attended this year’s induction ceremony held in Carpi, Italy, which is located in the northern Italian province of Modena. She was presented with a silver medal by the city's mayor. Also present at the organization’s annual meeting were Michael and Lori Milken Dean of Milken Institute School of Public Health Lynn Goldman, who became a member in 1999, and Laurie Welch, a former chair of the EOH department.
Emeritus EOH and Pediatrics Professor Jerome Paulson was also elected to membership last year, but he was unable to attend the induction ceremony. He is considered to be a Fellow-elect. Dr. Paulson’s decades of service as a clinician, an educator and an advocate have enhanced children's health by identifying and mitigating the impacts of environmental hazards on pediatric populations. In addition to serving as an emeritus professor in the Milken Institute School of Public Health’s EOH department and George Washington University School of Medicine & Health Sciences’s Pediatrics Department, he is the Medical Director for National & Global Affairs of the Child Health Advocacy Institute and director of the Mid-Atlantic Center for Children’s Health and the Environment at the Children’s National Health System.
Professorial Lecturer Celeste Monforton, DrPH, MPH was elected as a fellow this year and is eligible to participate in next year's induction ceremony.
The Collegium Ramazzini was founded in 1982 as an independent academy with the mission of advancing the study of occupational and environmental health issues. It serves as a bridge between the world of scientific discovery and the social and political centers which must act on such discoveries to protect public health. The organization’s name honors the father of occupational medicine, Bernardino Ramazzini, who was a professor at the Universities of Modena and Padua in the late 1600s and early 1700s.
Members must be elected into the Collegium, and the criteria include personal and professional integrity. The academy’s members assess present and future risks of injury and disease attributable to the workplace and the environment. The organization focuses on identifying preventable risk factors and communicating information about these hazards and their prevention to policy-making bodies, authorities, agencies and the public.