How Contact With Nature Could Make Us Healthier

Deirdre Lockwood · May 8, 2026

Featuring Dr. Howard Frumkin, Steering Committee member and researcher

As an internist focused on occupational and environmental health, Dr. Howard Frumkin has helped workers and communities lead healthier lives. As an epidemiologist — a former dean of the UW School of Public Health and professor emeritus in the UW Department of Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences (DEOHS) — he also investigates larger systems that influence our health, including climate change, the built environment, nature contact and sustainability.

Frumkin has served as senior vice president at Trust for Public Land; head of the Our Planet, Our Health initiative at the Wellcome Trust in London; and director of the National Center for Environmental Health and Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.

On May 26, Frumkin will be the featured speaker at the 2026 Omenn Lecture in Environmental Health, sponsored by DEOHS.

We chatted with Frumkin recently about the health benefits of nature, changing paradigms in environmental health, and rethinking scientific questions in light of Traditional Ecological Knowledge.