Division of Ecology and Health, University of Hawai’i at ManoaThe John A. Burns School of Medicine at the University of Hawai’i recently created the Division of Ecology and Health, headed by Dr. Bruce Wilcox, to conduct research and provide education in the area of human health and global environmental changes. An integrative, interdisciplinary approach to human-environment problems will enable faculty, staff, and students to address many aspects of this complex area of study. Several of the courses that will be offered through the Division of Ecology and Health to medical and graduate school students are “Environmental Dimensions of Human Health,” “Ecosystem Health,” “Community-Culture-Health,” and “Global Environmental Change and Human Health.” As part of the research program, members of this new program will delineate place-based communities and/or natural watersheds in Asia-Pacific. Faculty, staff, and students in the Division of Ecology and Culture will investigate multi-dimensional interconnections between transformations in the social, cultural, and political circumstances of these communities and their surrounding physical environments. The first research team assembled by the Division of Ecology and Health consists of faculty and graduate students from the disciplines of anthropology, conservation ecology, ethnobotany, sociology, psychiatry, and various departments in the John A. Burns School of Medicine such as the School of Nursing, Family Practice and Community Health, the Clinical Research Center, the Office of Biomedical Research, and the Native Hawaiian Center for Excellence. This team will focus on the linkage of ecosystems changes (such as pollution of fresh water sources and decline of ocean fisheries) and Native Hawaiian health concerns (such as high rates of obesity and diabetes) in an ahupua’a (‘pig altar’), or watershed, on the island of Oahu. In addition to collecting information, we will apply these data to improve human well-being and ecosystem integrity.