TTI Researchers Develop Curriculum for Transportation Emissions and Health

Researchers in the Texas A&M Transportation Institute’s (TTI’s) Center for Advancing Research in Transportation Emissions, Energy, and Health (CARTEEH) have developed a cross-disciplinary course titled Traffic-Related Air Pollution: Emissions, Human Exposures, and Health. A Tier-1 University Transportation Center program, CARTEEH is funded by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology (OST-R) and focuses on the intersection of transportation and health, including the growing impact of transportation emissions (see figure 1) on human health. TTI leads the CARTEEH consortium, which consists of four partner universities: Johns Hopkins University, Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Texas at El Paso, and the University of California, Riverside.

Transportation and health have historically been viewed as two distinct fields of education, research, and practice. Students, researchers, and practitioners in each field are typically taught their respective subject matter without touching on the other. There is a growing need, however, for cross-disciplinary training at the intersection of transportation and health. To deal with the complexities of how transportation impacts public health, we need new curricula that recognizes this relationship.