Madeleine Scammell
Associate Professor, Environmental Health
- Title Associate Professor, Environmental Health
- Office Talbot T438W
- Email mls@bu.edu
- Phone 617.358.2478
Dr. Scammell is an Associate Professor of Environmental Health at Boston University School of Public Health and a JPB Environmental Health Fellow at Harvard School of Public Health. Her expertise is in the area of community-driven and community-based participatory research and includes the use of qualitative methods in the area of environmental health and epidemiologic studies. Dr. Scammell is Principal Investigator a recently funded longitudinal study of agricultural workers in El Salvador (an NIEHS/NIH Outstanding New Environmental Scientist award), and a co-investigator on a study of occupational risk factors of kidney disease in both El Salvador and Nicaragua. These efforts are focused on identifying and preventing exposures that may contribute to the epidemic of chronic kidney disease in Central America known as Mesoamerican Nephropathy (MeN). She also leads a study examining health care claims and electronic medical records examining incidence, prevalence and risk factors of chronic kidney disease in the US. Dr. Scammell is also a member of the Consortium for the Epidemic of Nephropathy in Central America and Mexico (CENCAM). Additionally, Dr. Scammell leads the Community Engagement Cores of two research centers: The Boston University Superfund Research Center (funded by NIEHS/NIH), and the Center for Research on Social and Environmental Stressors in Housing across the Lifecourse (joint center between Boston University and Harvard-Chan School of Public Health funded by NIMHD/NIH and EPA). In this capacity her work includes developing mechanisms to support long-and short-term research relationships between community groups and scientists, and responding to community requests for scientific assistance. One example is a community-driven ambient air monitoring study focused on PCBs exposures near the New Bedford Harbor Superfund site. Dr. Scammell was the Principal Investigator of an EPA STAR grant to study cumulative risk in the urban environmental justice population of Chelsea, MA, where she lives and works in partnership with the Chelsea Collaborative and GreenRoots. Dr. Scammell has also partnered with the Boston Housing Authority, the Boston Public Health Commission and investigators at the Boston University School of Social Work on several studies to address systemic, social and structural environmental health stressors in the home environment. Dr. Scammell serves of the Board of Health in the City of Chelsea, and as Chair of the board of directors of the Science & Environmental Health Network. She teaches an upper level course, PH 801, Community-Engaged Research: Theory, application and methods, and previously taught Environmental Health Science, Law and Policy (EH 805) and Foundations of Environmental Health (EH 717). In 2014 Dr. Scammell co-edited with Charles Levenstein, The Toxic Schoolhouse, published by Baywood Press (now Routledge).
Expertise: Cumulative exposure risk, environmental justice