The Christina Lee Brown Envirome Institute engages researchers and citizen scientists to learn how our natural, social, and personal environments impact health. With Louisville as an Urban Laboratory, Institute researchers partner with community members and policy makers to discover how to build healthier cities.

Our Mission

With the city of Louisville as our urban laboratory, we will explore, learn, and understand how our natural, social, and personal environments impact human health and chronic disease. In partnership with communities, stakeholders, and visiting scholars, Institute researchers will study how environmental differences create health disparities between communities. Our work will bring greater understanding to how natural, social, and personal environments impact individual wellbeing and disease risk. 

Our Work

The Christina Lee Brown Envirome Institute's research unites a multidisciplinary group of physicians, scientists, chemists, engineers, epidemiologists, economists, psychologists, statisticians, sociologists, and community members to turn scientific discovery into actionable knowledge that can help us to build healthier cities by

• learning the effects of our environments on health,
• increasing understanding of environmental health risks,
• studying how differences in urban environments give rise to health disparities,
• investigating how changes in environments affect health outcomes and disease risk,
• creating a new curriculum for environmental health research, and
• developing new models for healthy, urban living.

Our Story

In 2018 the Christina Lee Brown Envirome Institute was created at the University of Louisville with the first major donation received by President Neeli Bendapudi. With this historic action, the Christina Lee Brown Envirome Institute began creating new models for collaboration between Louisville Metro Government, University of Louisville, Federal partners, philanthropic donors, corporations, and K-12 schools.

• Founding gift by Owsley Brown Family Foundation, received in June: model for philanthropic and academic research collaboration.
• Grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and The Nature Conservancy (TNC) received in July for Green Heart: model for federal, academic, public, and nonprofit research collaboration.
• Creating research models for nutritional health: using the Envirome's environmental domain structure to understand the relationships between food systems, access, and health.
• Creating research models for Comprehensive Health: using the Circle of Health and Harmony as a guiding philosophy to study the effects of the environment on the varied types of health.
• Progressing work and research from identifying the Social Determinants of Health and the disparities that arise to finding solutions based in comprehensive and quantitative Enviromics.

Christina Lee Brown, Activist & Philanthropist

Christy Brown is a global leader creating new ways to empower "citizen scientists" to lead healthier lives by advocating for a culture of health using nature as the standard, and encouraging all decisions to be made through the lens of health. She believes passionately in the potential of urban and rural communities to effect positive change by working together, at the same time celebrating their commonalities and differences.

A strong passion for community led Christy to become a co-founding board member of the Berry Center. Its mission is to accept no permanent damage to the ecosphere, by taking the health of local communities into consideration.
Understanding that healthy air, water and soil are the keys to health of all life, Christy founded the Institute for Healthy Air, Water & Soil in 2014. As the institute began to lean into its work, a bigger mission began to occur all around, attracting both local and national ambassadors. The work of the former, Institute for Healthy Air, Water & Soil's will now transition into the newly founded Center for Healthy Air, Water & Soil within the Envirome Institute.

The Envirome Team

The Envirome team is comprised of more than 200 people spanning the University of Louisville and including partners from other universities and institutions.