While providing critical services for mobility needs, transportation-related air pollution constitutes an important risk factor for cardiopulmonary disease, increases children’s asthma rates and premature mortality, lung cancer fatalities, and substantial loss of average life expectancy. Students first learned systems thinking about the complexity of transportation, emissions, air pollution, and public health problems. They then conducted real-time measurements of respiratory exposures at different places/facilities (e.g., walking, behind a bus, near a stop sign, in a parking lot, etc.) on Cornell’s Ithaca, New York campus. With the collected exposure data, the students came back to the lab to analyze the data and discussed the results.

Professor Travis exposed students to the broader One Health concept in a lecture and discussion session. He led an interactive computer laboratory session in which students had the opportunity to visualize and explore differences in the global burden of disease, comparing countries of the students’ choosing, and emphasizing differences between high and low income countries, urban vs rural populations, etc.