Dr. Brenda Eskenazi wins 2023 Child Health Advocate Award
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UC Berkeley School of Public Health Professor Brenda Eskenazi is one of five people to receive a 2023 Child Health Advocate Award from the Children’s Environmental Health Network (CEHN), a national nonprofit dedicated to protecting children from environmental hazards.
Dr. Eskenazi—who is the Distinguished Jennifer and Brian Maxwell Professor Emeritus of Maternal and Child Health and Epidemiology and director of the Center for Environmental Research and Community Health (CERCH)—will receive the science award from the organization and will be honored at an awards reception in Washington, DC, on October 12, which is Children’s Environmental Health Day.
CERCH is a world-renowned research center that studies environmental exposures and their impacts on pregnant women and children’s health. Researchers associated with the center have published more than 200 peer-reviewed scientific studies and the center’s community engagement efforts have changed lives and influenced policies to reduce environmental exposures locally, statewide, nationally, and globally. A major study for the center is CHAMACOS, the longest running longitudinal birth cohort study of pesticides and other environmental exposures among children in a farmworker community
“This award is a testament not only to me but to the incredible scientific work our team at CERCH has accomplished over the years,” said Dr. Eskenazi. “But there is a lot of work left to be done; we must keep pushing, learning, studying, educating and working together with community groups and policymakers to make the world cleaner and safer for our children and generations to come.”
Nsedu Witherspoon, MPH, executive director of CEHN, said, “Dr. Eskenazi has and continues to be a critical leader who has spent the majority of her professional career working to expose threats and and protect the health and safety of children, especially in marginalized communities. She has also been a key leader and mentor for a range of students and advocates in the field of child health protection, raising her voice both domestically and internationally.”
The Child Health Advocate Awards honor outstanding children’s environmental health leaders in policy, science, community, business, and arts/media. These child health champions have gone above and beyond to create systemic change, protecting children from environmental hazards.