Where Health Research Meets the Environment

The History of Envirome

In 2018 the Christina Lee Brown Envirome Institute was created at the University of Louisville. With this historic action, the Envirome Institute began creating new models for collaboration between Louisville Metro Government, universities, federal grantors, philanthropic donors, corporations, and K-12 schools.

• Founding gift from the Owsley Brown II Family Foundation, received in June: model for philanthropic and academic research collaboration.

• Grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and The Nature Conservancy (TNC) received in July to support the Green Heart Project: a model for federal, academic, public, and nonprofit research collaboration.

• Promoting comprehensive health: the Circle of Harmony and Health is a model to investigate the effects of the environment on multiple dimensions of health.

• Demonstrating thought leadership: progressing work and research from identifying the Social Determinants of Health and the associated disparities towards testing solutions based in comprehensive and quantitative Enviromics.

2021-2022 Annual Report

Our Research

We are an integrative group of physicians, scientists, engineers, epidemiologists, economists, psychologists, statisticians, sociologists, and community members working to turn scientific discovery into actionable knowledge by:

• Learning the effects of our environments on health

• Increasing understanding of environmental health risks

• Engage communities in bi-directional knowledge sharing

• Studying how differences in urban environments give rise to health disparities

• Investigating how changes in environments affect health outcomes and disease risk

• Creating a new curriculum for environmental health research

• Developing new models for healthy urban living

Our Values

At the Envirome Institute, we celebrate diversity in all its forms. We are proud to have some of the best scientists from around the world striving to understand the complex relationships between human health and our external environmental conditions. We are not bound by borders or the ways people group themselves because our environment affects us all equally as humans. The practice of science is a discussion, and we value the richness that multiple, varied voices can bring to our conversations.

Christy Brown

Mrs. Brown’s interconnected vision of health, incorporating citizen science and advocacy, inspired the foundation of The Institute for Healthy Air, Water, and Soil in 2012 as well as the partnership that became the Envirome Institute in 2018. Guided by the Circle of Harmony and Health, a tool she developed, Brown’s philanthropy promotes responsible decision making “through the Lens of Health.” The circle reveals interrelationships among environmental and human health and the need to bring all forms of social and individual health into balance. She currently serves on the boards of the Sustainable Food Trust in England, The Berry Center, The Center for Interfaith Relations, The Louisville Orchestra, and The National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Aruni Bhatnagar, PH.D., FAHA

Widely regarded for spearheading the new field of Environmental Cardiology, Dr. Aruni Bhatnagar, Smith and Lucille Gibson Professor of Medicine at the University of Louisville, has spent more than 25 years studying the impact of toxic substances, tobacco smoke constituents, and environmental pollutants on heart disease. A leader in cardiovascular health, he has participated in more than 50 peer-review panels for the National Institutes of Health, published over 280 scholarly articles and 20 book chapters, served on multiple committees for the Institute of Medicine and as the Deputy Editor for the American Heart Association’s Circulation Research. Dr. Bhatnagar currently serves as Director of the Christina Lee Brown Envirome Institute and American Heart Association Tobacco Regulation and Addiction Center at the University of Louisville.

Support Envirome

Support the Envirome’s transdisciplinary team of researchers as they develop new approaches to promote and preserve human health and further broad understanding that healthy air, water, and soil are the keys to the health of all life. You can donate online now or schedule an appointment with our Development Director.