"Globalization" has become a buzzword not only for the extent of today's anthropogenic environmental degradation, but also for the academic community's response to such degradation. Because this problem is increasingly reaching all corners of the globe, the University of Iowa in 1995 created a Global and Environmental Health Task Force. The Task Force was charged with exploring ways to integrate the academic efforts of professors in the health sciences with those of liberal arts and engineering faculty members. The Task Force was to develop mechanisms for encouraging the sharing of ideas and interests and also for stimulating the submission of interdisciplinary grants that would further the university's international efforts in both research and education.

After surveying the university's existing areas of strength, the Task Force selected "The Effects of Global Climate Change on Human Health" as a primary focus. The topic and potential areas for future interdisciplinary collaboration were further discussed in a CGRER-organized seminar that was held in the fall of 1996. That seminar, organized by Greg Carmichael, John Donelson, Amy Klion, Gerard Rushton, and David Schwartz, consisted of six sessions on the general topic, "Global Change and Environmental Health." About 25 faculty and staff members who attended the discussions were joined by ten graduate students enrolled in Carmichael's Atmospheric Chemistry course, who also produced reports on health and climate change. The seminar's interdisciplinary nature was reflected in the variety of departments represented by attendees: Internal Medicine, Cardiology, Biochemistry, Physiology, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Chemical and Biochemical Engineering, Geography, and Geology, among others.

Greg Carmichael (from Chemical and Biochemical Engineering) introduced the group to the basics of climate change and its predicted outcomes and surveyed current research in the field. Geologists Dick Baker and Luis Gonzalez talked about long-term climate change in the past and the responses such changes had invoked in flora and fauna. Then several medical school professors presented overviews of their areas of study and considered how their research might be altered by changing climate. Garry Buettner (General Medicine), along with Greg Carmichael, described the thinning of stratospheric ozone and its relationship to skin cancer, cataracts, and the like. Amy Klion (Internal Medicine) and John Donelson (Biochemistry) looked at infectious diseases, and David Schwartz (Internal Medicine) surveyed respiratory diseases. Relevant epidemiological techniques and biostatistical methods were covered by Brad Doebbeling (Internal Medicine) and Robert (Skip) Woolson (Preventive Medicine). Thomas Charlton, from Anthropology, then surveyed some ancient societies that had collapsed due to environmental change, and Gerard Rushton, a geographer, discussed how various aspects of social systems such as population growth and economic systems would interact with changing climate and health scenarios. He also looked at the role of geographical information systems (GIS). Finally Greg Carmichael concluded the program with a discussion of how research programs at Iowa could address these multifaceted problems.

The seminar certainly succeeded in introducing members of various colleges to each other, as well as to the interplay of climate change and human health.

Participants came away believing that further collaboration would be beneficial. Such collaboration is now being discussed. A course in the interrelations of climate change and health, which would be team-taught by faculty from CGRER and the medical school, may be established. Also possible are interdisciplinary proposals for research grants or fellowships that focus on the single strongest collaborative field identified: pulmonary disease and aerosol air pollutants. Grants relating climate change to infectious disease, an important area of investigation, will require a strengthening of our on-campus medical entomology capabilities before they can be competative.