Lara Cushing

Lara J. Cushing is an assistant professor of environmental health sciences and holds the Jonathan and Karin Fielding Presidential Chair in Health Equity at the Fielding School of Public Health of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).[1]

Lara Cushing
Alma materUniversity of California, Berkeley
OccupationResearch scientist
Scientific career
FieldsPublic health
InstitutionsUniversity of California, Los Angeles
Websitehttps://erg.berkeley.edu/people/lara-cushing/

Cushing studies exposures to environmental hazards and their relationship to social inequalities involving race and class. She also studies effects on pregnant women and infants. She addresses the health consequences of living near greenspace, urban heat islands, hazardous materials sites, oil and gas drilling sites and exposure to dangerous chemicals in the air and water. She examines the disparate impacts of global climate change, sea level rise and other issues involving environmental justice.[2][3]

Career

Cushing has a B.S. in molecular environmental biology, an M.P.H. in epidemiology (2011),[4] and a PhD in energy & resources (2015) from the University of California, Berkeley.[2]

From 2016-2020 Cushing was an assistant professor in the Department of Health Education at San Francisco State University.[3] In addition she was a visiting scholar in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management at the University of California, Los Angeles.[2]

As of October 2021, she became an assistant professor of environmental health sciences and the Jonathan and Karin Fielding Presidential Chair in Health Equity at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health.[1]

Research

Cushing received an EPA STAR Graduate Fellowship (2012–2015) in support of her Ph.D. work, to examine health impacts of climate change and their relationship to race, ethnicity and class in Texas, from an environmental justice perspective.[5]

In addition she was a 2014 Environmental Fellow of the Robert & Patricia Switzer Foundation,[6] and a 2018 JPB Environmental Health Fellow of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.[4][7]

Cushing was a contributing author to the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (2007)[3] and IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (2014) of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).[8]

She is interested in analytical methods for epidemiological studies and in developing regulatory frameworks to reduce environmental health disparities. She helped to develop a statewide environmental justice screening tool for use in California: the California Communities Environmental Health Screening Tool or CalEnviroScreen proposed as part of California Senate Bill 535 (2012).[9]

In 2018, Cushing and others published the results of studying California’s cap-and-trade program. Evidence from the carbon-trading program between 2011 and 2015 supported concerns that companies would keep emitting. Half of the facilities involved actually increased in-state emissions during the period observed. Facilities in disadvantaged neighborhoods were more likely to increase emissions.[10]

In 2020, Cushing and Jill E. Johnston reported on the potential health impacts on pregnant women of flaring in the Eagle Ford Shale of Texas. Their results showed that women who lived closer to the flares had a 30-50% higher risk of premature birth and lower birth weight than women who did not live near oil and gas wells. In addition, self-identified Latina or Hispanic women were exposed to more flaring and were at higher risk of preterm birth.[11][12][July 20, 2020 1][13]

Selected publications

Notes
  1. Marks, Michael (20 July 2020). "Risk Of Preterm Births Significantly Greater Near Natural Gas Flaring Sites, Study Finds". Texas Standard. Retrieved 21 October 2021.

References
  1. UCLA Fielding School of Public Health (1 October 2021). "Dr. Lara Cushing Appointed to Fielding Presidential Chair in Health Equity at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health". NewsWire. Retrieved 21 October 2021.
  2. "PERE Affiliate Researchers Lara Cushing". Equity Research Institute. Retrieved 21 October 2021.
  3. "Lara Cushing". UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. Retrieved 21 October 2021.
  4. "Lara Cushing". The JPB Environmental Health Fellows Program. Harvard: T.H. Chan School of Public Health. 1 July 2020. Retrieved 21 October 2021.
  5. "An Environmental Justice Analysis of the Health Impacts of Climate Change EPA Grant Number: FP917447". Environmental Protection Agency. Retrieved 21 October 2021.
  6. "Lara Cushing". Switzer Foundation. Retrieved 21 October 2021.
  7. "Cushing Wins Prestigious Fellowship in Environmental Health". San Francisco State University. October 15, 2018. Retrieved 21 October 2021.
  8. "Lara Cushing". Energy and Resources Group. University of California Berkeley. 4 October 2013. Retrieved 22 October 2021.
  9. "Reports & Publications". Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment. California Environmental Protection Agency. Retrieved 21 October 2021.
  10. Rosen, Julia (December 16, 2020). "Can California's cap and trade address environmental justice? | Greenbiz". GreenBiz. Retrieved 21 October 2021.
  11. Rosen, Julia (July 22, 2020). "Study Links Gas Flares to Preterm Births, With Hispanic Women at High Risk". The New York Times. Retrieved 21 October 2021.
  12. "Exposure to natural gas flaring raises risk of preterm birth by 50%". The Guardian. 31 July 2020. Retrieved 21 October 2021.
  13. Hopper, Leigh (11 March 2021). "Half a million Americans are exposed to health risks of oil and gas flaring". USC News. Retrieved 21 October 2021.
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