Center Director: Sarah A. Felknor, DrPH
The mission of the Southwest Center For Occupational and Environmental Health (SWCOEH) is to promote health, safety, and well-being in the workplace and the community. The goal of the Center is to respond to the critical need for well-trained occupational and environmental health specialists by providing graduate-level academic training and continuing education with an underlying foundation of a state-of-the-art occupational and environmental health research program. Center faculty engage in a multidisciplinary approach to research that investigates the causes and conditions of occupational and environmental health risk factors in a variety of industrial and community settings. The development of effective preventive strategies and interventions depends on accurate investigation.
In addition to the conduct of research, the Center meets its mission by providing a variety of research training opportunities at the graduate level for occupational and environmental health professionals, with a focus on Public Health Region VI, which includes Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas, and New Mexico. The SWCOEH also has a large international presence in Latin America with collaborators in several countries throughout the region.
Research areas of the Center:
- Occupational asthma
- Environmental exposures and childhood asthma
- Occupational bladder cancer
- Lead poisoning
- Migrant farmworker epidemiology
- PBB contamination
- International aspects of occupational health
- Workplace ergonomics
- Occupational hazards of health care workers
