Helena Chapman serves as Associate Program Manager for Health and Air Quality Applications in the Applied Sciences Program (Booz Allen Hamilton) of the Earth Science Division at NASA Headquarters. In this focus area, her team promotes the use of Earth observation data in public health applications, related to air quality management and infectious disease prevention and control. She is Professorial Lecturer in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University.
Trained in medicine and public health, she is passionate about promoting transdisciplinary collaborations that investigate and mitigate risks to human, animal, and ecosystem health. She is a member of the One Health Initiative Autonomous pro bono team and leader of the One Health Commission’s One Health Social Sciences Initiative. Her research examines the complex interplay of intrinsic and extrinsic factors that influence individual and community adherence to recommended dengue and tuberculosis prevention measures in Cuba and the Dominican Republic. She was founding member and current advisor of the Organización Dominicana de Estudiantes de Medicina (ODEM), which aims to strengthen medical students’ collaborations in leadership, research, and educational activities in the Dominican Republic.
She is a former AAAS S&T Policy Fellow in the NASA Applied Sciences Program and Christine Mirzayan S&T Policy Fellow at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
She received her PhD in Public Health (One Health) and MPH (Epidemiology) from the University of Florida and her MD from the Iberoamerican University in the Dominican Republic.