Thomas  Clasen

Rose Salamone Gangarosa Chair in Sanitation and Safe Water

After practicing international corporate law for 20 years, I returned to school and obtained an MSc in control of infectious diseases and a PhD in environmental health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.  I joined the faculty of the LSHTM in 2004, and became Professor of Water, Sanitation and Health. I moved to the Rollins School of Public Health in 2013 as Professor of Environmental Health and Rose Salamone Gangarosa Chair of Sanitation and Safe Water, and served as Interim Chair during the COVID months March-December 2020. I lead a group of researchers whose work consists mainly of health impact evaluations of water, sanitation and household air pollution interventions in low-income countries.  Research includes more than 15 RCTs in Latin America, Africa and South Asia; systematic reviews of water quality and sanitation interventions to prevent diarrhoeal disease and enteric infection; methods papers on improving the rigor of evalutating environmental health interventions; cost and cost-effectiveness analyses; and policy analyses of global environmental health initiatives.  Current field research includes the Climate Resilient Odisha Produce Study (CROPS) to develop and assess an interventon to use grey water to irrigate homestead gardens; the Revitalizing Informal Settlements and their Environments (RISE) trial to assess the impact of a water and sanitation intervention among informal settlements in Fiji and Indonesia; the Climate & Health Actionable Research and Translation (CHART) Center to generate new knowledge about the health risks associated with climate change in urban areas; and the Household Air Pollution Intervention Network (HAPIN) trial to assess the health effects of household air pollution in India, Rwanda, Guatemala and Peru.