Dr. Adrienne Wald, associate professor of nursing, recently served as a mentor as part of a first-of-its-kind, year-long inaugural environmental health nurse fellowship program initiated by the Alliance of Nurses of Healthy Environments (ANHE). Dr. Wald was among the first group of 10 mentors who each worked with three ANHE fellows in their EPA region of the country during the historic year-long national fellowship program.

Mentees worked to implement programs of air quality monitoring and asthma prevention education in high-risk elementary schools in environmentally vulnerable areas in Puerto Rico; assess local environmental equity areas of concern mainly focused on environmental exposures impacting childhood asthma in Camden, NJ; and worked with local organizations in Queens, NY focused on local issues including heat vulnerability, violence as a public health crisis, and air quality issues related to local airports.

“As a nurse academic, being a mentor for the fellowship offered an enriching opportunity to educate and work with several fellows on their projects with local community organizations specifically tackling serious environmental health threats,” said Wald. “ANHE is the only national nursing organization focused on the intersection of health and the environment. The three fellows selected in EPA region 2 included one fellow in New York, one in New Jersey, and one in Puerto Rico. Each fellow engaged with a community-based organization to support its work on environmental health equity and justice related health at the local level.”

The photo shows (left to right) Dr. Lisa Whitfield-Harris, Felix Roman, Dr. Adrienne Wald (mentor), and Ruth Ruivivar Esa