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Things are heating up in Italy this week.

Faculty members from the Center for Health, Work & Environment are traveling to Bologna, Italy, this week to attend the Collegium Ramazzini 2023 Conference. Collegium Ramazzini is an international scientific academy comprised of physicians and scientists from 35 countries. Named after the grandfather of occupational medicine, Bernardino Ramazzini, the academy’s mission is to advance knowledge of occupational and environmental health, prevent disease and save lives.

Collegium Ramazzini fellows are nominated by their peers based on distinguished careers dedicated to worker health and safety and significant contributions to the field. Lee Newman, MD, MA, was elected to Fellowship 2004. For decades, his clinical practice focused on the diagnosis, management and prevention of occupational and environmental lung disorders and granulomatous diseases, especially chronic beryllium disease, interstitial lung disorders, and sarcoidosis. The focus for his research has shifted over the past eight years to address the impacts of climate change on worker health and safety. On the final day of the conference, Newman will be chairing the panel, “Solutions and challenges for prevention of heat-associated occupational illnesses and injuries.”

 ^{Left: Meeting Inauguration ceremony held in the Capella Farnese, Bologna. Pictured: Rick Woychik, Director of the U.S. National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS). Right: Pictured: Lee Newman and Miranda Dally.}

This year’s conference, “Environment, Work and Health in the 21st Century: Strategies and Solutions to a Global Crisis,” marks a major step forward for the academy. For the first time in history, climate change is a primary topic of discussion for both research and practice in the conference. Fellows of the Collegium have invited contributions from international policymakers, scientists, and experts in different fields, to focus on how the intersection of policy and science addresses urgent and emerging environmental risks to human health, whether at work or in their communities. Following the event, the Collegium will release a major publication that includes an action plan based on the topics discussed.

At the awards ceremony on October 24, 2023, Daniel Tau Teitelbaum, MD, adjunct professor in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health at Colorado School of Public Health, received the prestigious Ramazzini Award. In keeping with the tradition of the Collegium, the award was presented by the Assessore Commune di Carpi, currently Tamara Calzolari. (Bernadino Ramazzini was born in Carpi, Italy, in 1633).


Miranda Dally, MS, senior instructor in the Center for Health, Work & Environment won the poster presentation for her research at the conference, addressing the effects of heat on the Mexican workforce. Jaime Butler-Dawson, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health will discuss our Center’s longstanding research in developing practical solutions to benefit workers at-risk for chronic kidney disease of unknown cause (CKDu) in Latin America. These topics reflect the goal of the conference as our Center’s mission to be on the forefront of addressing emerging issues for workers.