About Us

Change starts with science

Environmental Health Sciences is a nonpartisan, nonprofit news and science organization that aims to drive good science into public policy and public discussion on our environment and health, including climate change.

We’ve been at this since 2002.

Our core strategy:

  • Alert the public to critical threats.
  • Advance news cycles on core topics.
  • Solve entrenched problems with interdisciplinary collaborations.

We have a network of hundreds of scientists across the globe at universities, research institutions and government agencies. Our two websites, EHN.org and DailyClimate.org, serve up 3 million pageviews per year and have 120,000 followers on social media. We deliver a mix of daily and weekly newsletters to 32,000 subscribers.

We have won national and international awards for our work. And we are passionate about driving science into public discussion and policy on environmental health, justice and climate issues.

 

Editorial and Donor Transparency

Environmental Health Sciences’ commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion

EHS brings an equity-rooted focus to its work contextualizing science, improving our health, and making our environment safer and more sustainable for all.

These following guiding principles are simply the foundation of our work to address social and environmental injustice and inequity.

By focusing on equity, we aim to transform the root causes of structural environmental inequity, so we no longer have to remedy its symptoms.

Our values

EHS believes that equity work happens at the intersection of power and opportunity. We work with and within science and journalism to elevate power within communities and create opportunities so that race, gender, and/or ZIP code do not predict your health or environment.

We also believe that equity does not happen by chance, and EHS will act on and invest in efforts that measure, track and close outcome gaps. That requires looking in as well as out, and EHS will spend time and resources to expand more diverse leadership within its board, staff, partners and advisory bodies.

Equity is an intentional, urgent attempt to right historical wrongs through systems-building. Outcome gaps plague our country and region because of practices that harm underrepresented communities. This improved collective wellbeing is a shared right and shared responsibility. We believe that, jointly with science, those whose health is affected by policy should have the driving voices in the creation of those policies.

Our work & commitment

We recognize that structural environmental inequities must be relentlessly exposed, measured and disrupted. We do so using data, history and stories to explain the systems and structures supporting long-standing inequities.

We use science whenever possible, but we also recognize that our goal is to change people’s lives and environments for the better. As we unwind the systems that created historic and ongoing inequities, we use stories and journalism to breathe life into tangible impacts of those inequities – and to highlight paths toward a more equitable future.

We further recognize that we have much work to do within our organization. While we operate from a perspective of urgency, we recognize that these inequities are endemic both within and without our spheres of influence.

Staff

Douglas Fischer

Douglas Fischer

Executive Director, Bozeman, Mont.

Fischer brings three decades of experience as a journalist and joined EHS in 2008.

Pete Myers

Pete Myers

Chief Scientist and Board Chair, Charlottesville, Va.

Myers founded Environmental Health Sciences in 2002 and is an Adjunct Professor of Chemistry at Carnegie Mellon University.

Angela Marie Hutchinson

Angela Marie Hutchinson

Engagement Director, Los Angeles, Calif.

Hutchinson is a journalist, producer and author who has been recognized as a media and arts trailblazer by the U.S. Congress.

Matt Kayhoe

Matt Kayhoe

Director of Strategy and Partnerships, Washington, D.C.

Kayhoe brings two decades of leadership on organizational change and collaboration, joining EHS in in 2022 to oversee partnership expansion.

Brian Bienkowski

Brian Bienkowski

Senior Editor, Sault Sainte Marie, Mich.

Bienkowski joined EHN in 2012 and had an immediate impact, anchoring a reporting team that won an Oakes Award honorable mention.

María Paula Rubiano A.

María Paula Rubiano A.

Assistant Editor, Medellín, Colombia

Rubiano developed the environmental justice beat for “El Spectador,” one of Colombia’s most respected newspapers, and fosters EHS' collaboration with the Agents of Change program.

Peter Dykstra

Peter Dykstra

Weekend Editor, Atlanta, Ga.

Dykstra's deep history in environmental journalism has netted him shares of Emmy, Peabody, and DuPont-Columbia awards.

Jerry Heindel

Jerry Heindel

HEEDS Program Director, Raleigh, N.C.

Heindel founded and directs the Healthy Environment and Endocrine Disruptor Strategies (HEEDS) collaboration.

Kristina Marusic

Kristina Marusic

Environmental reporter, Pittsburgh, Pa.

Award-winning journalist Marusic joined EHS in 2018 to cover environmental health and justice in Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania.

Gwen Rhein

Gwen Rhein

Communications and Engagement, Anchorage, Alaska

Rhein works to increase reader engagement and interaction across all of EHS' platforms.

Sarah Howard

Sarah Howard

HEEDS Program Manager, East Greenbush, N.Y.

Howard is an expert on the environmental factors contributing to the global diabetes epidemic

Shanna Swan

Shanna Swan

Senior Scientist, San Francisco, Calif.

Swan, a world-renowned reproductive epidemiologist, brings global expertise on fertility, sexual function and reproductive disorders.

Autumn Spanne

Autumn Spanne

EHN en Español Manager and Researcher, Barcelona, Spain

Spanne spearheads EHN en Español, our Spanish initiative, while aggregating important news from across the web.

Megan McLaughlin

Megan McLaughlin

Researcher, Portland, Ore.

McLaughlin is a master at scouring the internet for consequential news to bring to our readers.

Jim Germond

Jim Germond

Researcher, Santa Fe, N.M.

Germond is a third member of the EHS aggregation team, providing a keen eye and catching news and commentary worth sharing.