Welcome to the 👋

Water, Health, Opportunity Lab (WHO Lab)

@ Milken Institute School of Public Health, George Washington University

We study how clean drinking water and other environmental factors impact population health and health disparities. We conduct rigorous and policy-relevant research to generate evidence at a large scale, leveraging transdisciplinary approaches spanning exposure science, geospatial data science, and health informatics.

Our latest projects

Drinking Water PFAS Mixtures and Reproductive Health
NEW

We are building a place-based framework to quantify PFAS mixtures in U.S. drinking water, from public water systems to private wells, validate the estimates against independent measurements, and examine how preconception exposure relates to fecundability.

Funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (K01ES039051).

Wastewater and Environmental Surveillance in Public Health Decision-Making
NEW

As a cross-country research partner in the Exemplars in Global Health study, we examine how countries have used wastewater and environmental surveillance to inform public health decisions, and what makes these programs effective and sustainable.

Funded by the Gates Foundation through Exemplars in Global Health.

Private Well Contamination Risk After Hurricanes

We developed a hybrid supervised-unsupervised risk score for private well contamination after Hurricane Helene, validated it against empirical well testing data, and paired it with a community-informed assessment.

Pilot project funded by the NIEHS-funded REACH Center (P20 ES036775).

Hurricanes and Acute Gastrointestinal Illness

Using near-real-time electronic health record data from Truveta, we assess how hurricanes affect acute gastrointestinal illness, avoiding the long reporting lags of traditional surveillance data.

Pilot project funded by the NIEHS-funded REACH Center (P20 ES036775).

National PFAS Predictive Model for Groundwater

We use transfer and multi-task machine learning to predict PFAS concentrations in groundwater throughout the contiguous United States, filling the data gap for the millions of Americans who rely on private wells.

Funded by George Washington University's Cross Disciplinary Research Fund and a Milken Institute SPH Research Innovation Award.

Water Insecurity, Sugar-Sweetened Beverages, and Climate Resilience

A system science approach to the nexus of water intake, water security, and climate resilience, including group model building with communities in the Navajo Nation and system dynamics modeling in Puerto Rico.

Funded by the Sumner M. Redstone Global Center for Prevention and Wellness.