Christina Lee Brown
Envirome Institute

We believe that:

• Health arises from positive interactions between genetic disposition and environmental conditions.

• Human health is result of complementary interactions between the genome and the envirome.

• Health relates not only to physical health, but to cultural, psychological, environmental, economic, nutritional, spiritual, and intellectual health of individuals and the communities they live in.

• Creation of environmental knowledge needs enduring and abiding community partnerships.

• Research and education require an inclusive and diverse community and true scholarship fosters an environment of acceptance and equity.

• It is better to actively promote health than to passively prevent disease.

The Institute is embedded in its community. It is committed to learning and working with the community to understand and remove barriers to individual health imposed by unconducive urban environments. We are committed to improving the urban environments to promote healthy living.

Our Centers work together to create healthier environments and healthier lives. We work with molecules, cells, and animals to understand basic fundamental mechanisms of chronic diseases such as obesity, diabetes and heart disease. We conduct clinical trials to assess how conducive environments foster health and wellness. We study how lifestyle choices such as smoking, vaping and physical inactivity affect health, and we undertake community studies to identify environmental conditions and exposures that affect individual health in urban neighborhoods.

Healthy environments and healthy interactions with the environment are essential for human health and well-being. The Christina Lee Brown Envirome Institute is dedicated to creating new knowledge of the totality of environmental conditions understood as the envirome and how it shapes human health; and to use this knowledge to promote wellness and strengthen resilience.

Human health is not merely a province of isolated individuals, but a collective social phenomenon. It arises from integrated confluence of nutritional, economic, environmental, psychological, intellectual, spiritual, cultural, and physical health of individuals and their communities. Good health is a resource earned from living in healthy, conducive, and unpolluted environments.

Health is more than the absence of disease. It is the ability to withstand stress and recover from harm; a resource earned from living in unpolluted ecosystems, equitable societies, and sustainable lifestyles.

Causes of good and ill health relate mostly to the environment. More than 70% of diabetes, 80% of heart disease, and 97% of all cancers are attributable to environmental, that is, non-genetic causes.

Disease is an abnormality caused in part by the actions of a hostile or unconducive environment, and in part by unsuccessful interactions with the environment. Therefore, to enhance health, we seek to understand and remove environmental barriers to individual health and focus on prevention by promoting instrumental health and enduring resilience.

Human environments are complex. They have variable geographic features overlaid by social structures fashioned by variable evolutionary and social histories. They shape individual development and they affect health, aging, and disease risk. Identifying the links between environment and health could; therefore, provide new insights into process that sustain and promote health.

We are engaged in learning how environmental factors promote health.