chemical exposure

Professors Named to National Academies Committee Examining Toxic Exposures and Mental Health

Jaimie Gradus, professor of epidemiology, and Patricia Janulewicz Lloyd, associate professor of environmental health, will help assess the potential relationship between exposure to toxic substances experienced during military service and variety of mental health and other conditions.

Two SPH faculty have been appointed to serve on a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) committee examining possible connections between veterans’ military service exposure to toxic substances and potential mental health conditions.

Jaimie Gradus, professor of epidemiology, and Patricia Janulewicz Lloyd, associate professor of environmental health, met with fellow committee members in Washington D.C. on Feb. 22 and 23 for the panel’s first meeting.

Using Veterans Health Administration health care records and other VA data, the committee will conduct an independent scientific assessment of the potential relationship between exposure to toxic substances experienced during military service and variety of mental health and other conditions including:

• posttraumatic stress disorder
• depression
• episodes of psychosis
• schizophrenia
• bipolar disorder
• chronic multisymptom illness
• traumatic brain injury
• neurocognitive disorders (e.g., dementia)
• attention deficit hyperactivity disorder
• suicide attempts and suicide deaths.

Gradus is the director of the SPH Center for Trauma and Mental Health, with research interests are in the epidemiology of trauma and trauma-related disorders, with a particular focus on suicide. Over the years, she has received multiple grants to conduct psychiatric epidemiologic research in both veterans and the general population. She has also served on a previous NASEM committee to contribute PTSD expertise to a report for the Social Security Administration.

Janulewicz Lloyd is the director and principal investigator of the HRSA-funded New England Public Health Training Center, and combines her expertise in environmental health, neurotoxicology and teratology to examine how environmental exposures affect the nervous system. She has researched veterans’ health for over a decade with particular focus on Gulf War Illness, and previously served on the NASEM Committee on the Review of the VA Guidance for the Health Conditions Identified by the Camp Lejeune Legislation.