Background
Helena Chapman serves as Associate Program Manager for Health and Air Quality Applications in the Earth Action Program of the NASA Earth Science Division. The Program encourages innovative applications of NASA Earth observation data to improve health decision-making in air quality management, infectious disease prevention and control, and other environmental health topics.
In her position, Helena helps manage a portfolio of Health and Air Quality projects focused on public health applications. She coordinates panel submissions to scientific conferences, which provide research updates and facilitate researcher and stakeholder engagement. She also serves as Executive Coordinator of the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) Health Community of Practice and Earth Observations for Health (EO4Health) Initiative. Through these efforts, her team aims to leverage expertise and bridge connections between the Earth and health science communities.
Prior to this position, she served as the AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow (One Health lead) in the NASA Applied Sciences Program as well as Christine Mirzayan Science & Technology Policy Fellow at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. She is a member of the One Health Initiative Autonomous pro bono team, where she promotes the One Health concept and the value of transdisciplinary health collaborations to examine and mitigate health risks of humans, animals, and ecosystems. In 2021, she was awarded the NASA Early Career Achievement Medal, in recognition of outstanding early career service to NASA in advancing innovative and practical uses of Earth Science observations for improving public health decision-making.
Helena received her doctoral degree in Public Health (One Health) and master’s degree in Public Health (Epidemiology) from the University of Florida and her medical degree from the Iberoamerican University in the Dominican Republic.
Related Impact
