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Raphael Arku

Assistant Professor, Environmental Health Sciences

Involvement: 

School or College: 

Institute for Global Health

Research: 

Urban growth in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is largely unplanned and marked by significant environmental pollution, including air and noise from diverse sources. Yet, there is little information on urban air and noise pollution impacts in the SSA setting to support policy and behavioral decisions. Children are affected by these exposures in uniquely damaging ways that present future health and socioeconomic risks to survivors. This CRF work will fill research data gap by quantifying the effects of long-term maternal and early prenatal exposures to air and environmental noise pollution on neurodevelopment in infants and toddlers in Accra, Ghana.

Unlike in high-income countries, cities in SSA are dotted with diverse and complex emission sources that influence the air pollution mixture and environmental noise levels. Emerging data in SSA cities show that there are large exposure disparities in relation to neighborhood and socioeconomic factors, with potentially huge impacts on health inequalities. One critical subpopulation that is of great concern but has been largely overlooked when it comes to SSA’s poor urban environmental health risks is children. This is likely because of the limited availability of data. Thus, rigorous scientific research in this geography is needed to support public health policies in this context, where exposures are high and vary widely, but with little epidemiologic data.

My long-term goal is to generate relevant data in SSA to start making case for environmental health relevant policies that aim at reducing air and noise pollution and their associated health impacts. I hope to leverage the accountability and support of the CRF program to develop highly competitive grants to support the above goal.