Toxicology and Societies: Lorelei Walker

Lorelei Walker

Start Date

End Date

Event Location

Virtual

Event Description

Title: Gaps in health equity during COVID-19: Disinfectants in licensed childcare settings and the impacts to priority populations.

In December of 2021, the WA State Department of Health (DOH) was awarded a 7-month CDC/ATSDR grant to combat the increasing overuse and misuse of disinfectants in licensed childcare centers. A decade of crippling state budget cuts, especially in environmental health, left 4,100 licensed centers without dedicated DOH support when COVID-19 hit. During this presentation, Dr. Walker will recount the nationwide effort to determine effective health-positive cleaning & disinfecting practices for SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19), resolve current barriers for priority populations, and realistic opportunities to close the state’s health equity gap.

About the Speaker: Lorelei Walker, Director of Public Health Training for the Social Safety Initiative

Dr. Lorelei E. Walker (she/her) is an experienced public health professional, community advocate, policymaker, labor leader, and science educator. Her interdisciplinary focus fuels community-centric action enabling systematic change for the greater good. Dr. Walker serves her community by participating on local nonprofit boards, participating in national community partnerships, launching a graduate course, shepherding young professional programs, advocating for environmental health, and bargaining ground-breaking policy for wage equity.

Dr. Walker earned a PhD in Public Health and MPH from the University of Washington’s School of Public Health, Institute for Public Health Genetics. Her work focused on allostatic load, stress response programming, environmental toxicants, epigenetic adaptation, health equity, and community organizing. She is currently the Director of Public Health Training for the Social Safety Initiative and lives in Issaquah, WA with her feisty 7-year-old daughter and her family. Check out her YouTube channel to see her in action.

 

Watch a recording of this presentation.

 

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