Our history
Sidebar
The University of Louisville's Christina Lee Brown Envirome Institute was established in 2018.
We are dedicated to creating new knowledge about the totality of environmental conditions understood as the envirome and how the envirome shapes cardiovascular health.
We believe that through rigorous scientific investigation of the interconnections between human health and the environment, we can change the understanding, trajectory and treatment of chronic disease through environmental modifications.
Since its inception, the Envirome Institute has been creating new models for collaboration between Louisville Metro Government, universities, federal grantors, philanthropic donors, corporations, K-12 schools and the Louisville community.
Christy Brown
Christy Brown’s interconnected vision of health, incorporating citizen science and advocacy, inspired the creation of the Institute for Healthy Air, Water and Soil in 2012 as well as the partnership that became the Envirome Institute in 2018. Guided by the circle of harmony and health, a tool she developed, Brown’s philanthropy promotes responsible decision making through the lens of health. The harmony circle reveals interrelationships among environmental and human health and the need to bring all forms of social and individual health into balance. She currently serves on the boards of the Sustainable Food Trust in England, The Berry Center, the Center for Interfaith Relations, the Louisville Orchestra and the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
"We live in a complex, interdependent world where history is our shared legacy and health is our shared aspiration."
Aruni Bhatnagar, PhD, FAHA
Widely regarded as a pioneer in the new field of environmental cardiology, Aruni Bhatnagar is the founding director of the Christina Lee Brown Envirome Institute. He is the chief of the Division of Environmental Medicine, the Smith and Lucille Gibson Professor of Medicine, co-director of the American Heart Association Tobacco Regulation Center and a distinguished university scholar at the University of Louisville. Bhatnagar has spent more than 30 years studying the impact of toxic substances, tobacco smoke constituents and environmental pollutants on heart disease.
Milestones
October 2017
The Green Heart Louisville Project launches. Researchers will examine the link between neighborhood greenery and human health in collaboration with The Nature Conservancy and other partners and with financial support from the National Institutes of Health. This groundbreaking project located in South Louisville will bring together federal, academic, community and nonprofit research collaborators. Read more about the Green Heart Louisville Project.
June 2018
The Envirome Institute’s founding gift from the Owsley Brown II Family Foundation serves as a model for philanthropic and academic research collaboration. Read more about the founding gift.
May 2022
The University of Louisville announces the creation of a new campus in downtown Louisville to be known as the UofL Christina Lee Brown Envirome Institute – New Vision of Health Campus, where study will focus on health as a shared community resource, incorporating environmental and cultural factors. Read more about the New Vision of Health Campus.
November 2022
The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences awards $10.8 million in renewed funding for the University of Louisville Superfund Research Center, part of the Christina Lee Brown Envirome Institute. The funds will enable researchers to expand studies to monitor environmental toxins and understand their effects on human health. Read more about the Superfund Research Center's funding renewal.
August 2024
The Envirome Institute announces initial results of the Green Heart Louisville Project which show that people living in neighborhoods where the number of trees and shrubs was more than doubled showed lower levels of a blood marker of inflammation than those living outside the planted areas. Learn more about the Green Heart Louisville Project. Read more about the Green Heart Louisville Project's initial findings.
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