Community Events

Environmental Health Sciences Community Events

In the 2025-26 academic year, the College of Health and Human Development's environmental health sciences program area will be supporting the following events:

Fall 2025

Water Insecurity, Distress, and Depression: A Global Perspective

October 27, 2025, 4 p.m. | Bennett Pierce Living Center, 110 Henderson Building, Penn State University Park

Speaker: Alex Brewis, Arizona State University President's Professor
Abstract: Living with household water insecurity is consistently associated with depression and other negative mental health effects. Yet the amount or quality of water does not well explain what is observed in field-based studies. For example, men and women living in the same house with the same inadequate water source can show highly divergent mental health outcomes. Based on our team’s recent studies with water insecure households in Haiti, India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Ethiopia, Iran, and the United States, we have been able to identify a range of mechanisms related to the social and cultural meanings of water that help explain why water insecurity is so consistently depressing. These include the capacities of water insecurity to trigger conflict, reveal inequities, inflict shame, and as an index social failure. Living with water is inherently stressful, but understanding the complex bases of that stress provides a means to develop innovative and effective solutions to a growing challenge faced by billions globally.

This talk is co-sponsored by the Department of Nutritional Sciences and the Department of Biobehavioral Health.

Environmental Health Sciences Affiliates Mixer

November 2025

In early November 2025, the Environmental Health Sciences program area is going to host a mixer, at which affiliates will get to know each other's research and/or teaching interests as they pertain to environmental health.

Details on this event to come.

Past Events

See past events hosted by the Environmental Health Sciences program area.