Jyotsna S. Jagai

University of Chicago | UC

Background: We examined patterns of smoking in relation to health-related socioeconomic vulnerability (HRSV) among U.S. women early in the pandemic and whether mental health symptoms mediated these relationships. Materials and Methods: Data were obtained from the April 2020 National U.S. Women's Health COVID-19 Study (N = 3200). Among current smoke...

Diabetes rates in the United States are staggering and climbing. Importantly, traditional risk factors fail to completely account for the magnitude of the diabetes epidemic. Environmental exposures, including urban and metropolitan transportation quality, are implicated as contributors to disease. Utilizing data from the county-level Environmental...

Background CommunityRx is an evidence-based social care intervention delivered to family and friend caregivers ("caregivers") at the point of healthcare to address health-related social risks (HRSRs). CommunityRx-Hunger is a double-blind randomized controlled trial (RCT) that enrolls caregivers of hospitalized children. CommunityRx-Dementia is a si...

Background: Female sexual activity and, accordingly, birth rates, tend to decline in times of stress, such as a pandemic. Additionally, when resources are scarce or exogenous conditions are threatening, some women may engage in sexual activity primarily to maintain socioeconomic security. Having unwanted sex may indicate sexual activity in exchang...

The prevalence of type 2 diabetes (T2D) has increased in the United States, and recent studies suggest that environmental factors contribute to T2D risk. We sought to understand if environmental factors were associated with the rate and magnitude of increase in diabetes prevalence at the county level. Methods: We obtained age-adjusted diabetes pr...

Background Prostate cancer (PC) etiology is up to 57% heritable, with the remainder attributed to environmental exposures. There are limited studies regarding national level environmental exposures and PC aggressiveness, which was the focus of this study Methods SEER was queried to identify PC cases between 2010 and 2014. The environmental quality...

Background Many studies neglect to account for variation in population served by community water systems (CWSs) when aggregating CWS-level contaminant concentrations to county level. Objective In an ecological epidemiologic analysis, we explored two methods—unweighted and weighted (proportion of CWS population served by county population)—to accou...

Although studies have investigated cadmium and prostate cancer (PC) incidence and mortality, the role of cadmium in PC progression might be more clinically relevant. In this observational study, we assessed the association between air cadmium exposure and PC aggressiveness, with PC stage defined as metastatic or localized and Gleason grade defined...

Environmental parameters, including built and sociodemographic environments, can impact diabetes control (DC). Epidemiological studies have associated specific environmental factors with DC; however, the impact of multidimensional environmental status has not been assessed. The environmental quality index (EQI), a comprehensive quantitative metric...

Background Food insecurity dramatically increased due to the COVID-19 pandemic; however, little is known about pandemic-related food insecurity in households with dietary restrictions. Objective Examine pre-pandemic rates of and pandemic-related change in food insecurity among households with and without dietary restrictions. Methods Cross-sectio...

Purpose To describe COVID-19 mortality in Chicago during the spring of 2020, and identify at the census-tract level neighborhood characteristics that were associated with higher COVID-19 mortality rates. Methods Using Poisson regression and regularized linear regression (elastic net), we evaluated the association between neighborhood characteristi...

Introduction Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in American women, and women of color bear a disproportionate burden of breast cancer morbidity and mortality. Breast cancer risk is influenced by harmful social forces (“structural violence”), environmental inequality, and familial history, but the independent effects of each of thes...

Background There is conflicting evidence of a relationship between cadmium exposure and prostate cancer (PC) mortality in the general population. Since most PCs are indolent and clinically inconsequential, low grade and low stage tumors may mask an association between cadmium exposure and PC mortality. Methods We collected patient data from the 201...

Gastrointestinal (GI) illnesses are associated with various environmental factors, such as water quality, stormwater runoff, agricultural runoff, sewer overflows, and wastewater treatment plant effluents. However, rather than assessing an individual factor alone, two indices incorporating a combination of ecological and environmental stressors were...

Study aim: Caloric excess and physical inactivity fail to fully account for the rise of diabetes prevalence. Individual environmental pollutants can disrupt glucose homeostasis and promote metabolic dysfunction. However, the impact of cumulative exposures on diabetes risk is unknown. Methods: The Environmental Quality Index (EQI) a county-level...

Objectives To estimate county-level adult life expectancy for Whites, Black/African Americans (Black), American Indian/Alaska Native (AIAN) and Asian/Pacific Islander (Asian) populations and assess the difference across racial groups in the relationship among life expectancy, rurality and specific race proportion. Methods We used individual-level...

Background The United States (U.S.) suffers from high infant mortality (IM) rates and there are significant racial/ethnic differences in these rates. Prior studies on the environment and infant mortality are generally limited to singular exposures. We utilize the Environmental Quality Index (EQI), a measure of cumulative environmental exposure (acr...

Physical inactivity is a primary contributor to the obesity epidemic, but may be promoted or hindered by environmental factors. To examine how cumulative environmental quality may modify the inactivity-obesity relationship, we conducted a cross-sectional study by linking county-level Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System data with the Environm...

Associations between LTPIA and obesity for each domain-specific EQI tertile, for the overall population, males, and females. (DOCX)

Associations between LTPIA and obesity for each EQI tertile, for the overall population, males, and females. (DOCX)

As of 2014, approximately 7.4% of U.S. adults had current asthma. The etiology of asthma is complex, involving genetics, behavior, and environmental factors. To explore the association between cumulative environmental quality and asthma prevalence in U.S. adults, we linked the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Environmental Quality Index (EQI)...

Purpose of review: Diabetes is a burgeoning threat to public health in the USA. Importantly, the burden of diabetes is not equally borne across society with marked disparities based on geography, race/ethnicity, and income. The etiology of global and population-specific diabetes risk remains incompletely understood; however, evidence linking envir...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1289/EHP2048.].

Background: Sanitary sewer overflows (SSOs) occur when untreated sewage is discharged into water sources before reaching the treatment facility, potentially contaminating the water source with gastrointestinal pathogens. Objectives: The objective of this paper is to assess associations between SSO events and rates of gastrointestinal (GI) illnes...

Burgeoning epidemiological, animal, and cellular data link environmental endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) to metabolic dysfunction. Disproportionate exposure to diabetes-associated EDCs may be an underappreciated contributor to disparities in metabolic disease risk. The burden of diabetes is not uniformly borne by American society; rather, thi...

Background: Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), a bacterial pathogen, is a predominant cause of skin and soft tissue infections (SSTI) in the United States. Swine-production facilities have been recognized as potential environmental reservoirs of MRSA. To better understand how swine production may contribute to MRSA infection, we e...

Background: Individual environmental exposures are associated with cancer development; however, environmental exposures occur simultaneously. The Environmental Quality Index (EQI) is a county-level measure of cumulative environmental exposures that occur in 5 domains. Methods: The EQI was linked to county-level annual age-adjusted cancer inciden...

Background The disease burden due to heat-stress illness (HSI), which can result in significant morbidity and mortality, is expected to increase as the climate continues to warm. In the United States (U.S.) much of what is known about HSI epidemiology is from analyses of urban heat waves. There is limited research addressing whether HSI hospitaliza...

The Flint Water Crisis—due to changes of water source and treatment procedures—has revealed many unsolved social, environmental, and public health problems for US drinking water, including opportunistic premise plumbing pathogens (OPPP). The true health impact of OPPP, especially in vulnerable populations such as the elderly, is largely unknown. We...

Background Environmental exposures often occur in tandem; however, epidemiological research often focuses on singular exposures. Statistical interactions among broad, well-characterized environmental domains have not yet been evaluated in association with health. We address this gap by conducting a county-level cross-sectional analysis of interacti...

Background: Assessing cumulative effects of the multiple environmental factors influencing mortality remains a challenging task. Objectives: This study aimed to examine the associations between cumulative environmental quality and all-cause and leading cause-specific (heart disease, cancer, and stroke) mortality rates. Methods: We used the ove...

Background/Question/Methods Many environmental factors influence human mortality simultaneously. However, assessing their cumulative effects remains a challenging task. In this study we used the Environmental Quality Index (EQI), developed by the U.S. EPA, as a measure of overall environmental exposure for 2000-2005. We investigated the relative co...

Many environmental factors have been independently associated with preterm birth (PTB). However, exposure is not isolated to a single environmental factor, but rather to many positive and negative factors that co-occur. The environmental quality index (EQI), a measure of cumulative environmental exposure across all US counties from 2000-2005, was u...

Combined sewer overflows (CSOs) occur in combined sewer systems when sewage and stormwater runoff are released into water bodies potentially contaminating water sources. CSOs are often caused by heavy precipitation and are expected to increase with increasing extreme precipitation associated with climate change. To assess whether the association be...

Background Trends in gastroenteritis-associated mortality are changing over time with development of antibiotic resistant strains of certain pathogens, improved diagnostic methods, and changing healthcare. In 1999, ICD-10 coding was introduced for mortality records which can also affect trends. We assess trends in gastroenteritis-associated mortali...

The relationship between environmental conditions and human health varies by urbanicity. To estimate ambient environmental conditions, an Environmental Quality Index (EQI) for 2000-2005 was constructed by the Environmental Protection Agency using county-level data representing five environmental domains (air, water, land, built and sociodemographic...

Physical inactivity has been associated with numerous adverse health outcomes including obesity, heart disease, and depression, and is considered a major contributor to all-cause mortality worldwide. Many studies have shown associations between specific environmental features (lack of sidewalks, safe surroundings, clean air) and physical inactivity...

Combined sewer systems collect rainwater runoff, sewage, and industrial wastewater for transit to treatment facilities. With heavy precipitation, volumes can exceed capacity of treatment facilities, and wastewater discharges directly to receiving waters. These combined sewer overflows (CSOs) are a source of episodic pollution for downstream water u...

Introduction Floods and other severe weather events are anticipated to increase as a result of global climate change. Floods can lead to outbreaks of gastroenteritis and other infectious diseases due to disruption of sewage and water infrastructure and impacts on sanitation and hygiene. Floods have also been indirectly associated with outbreaks thr...

Background A more comprehensive estimate of environmental quality would improve our understanding of the relationship between environmental conditions and human health. An environmental quality index (EQI) for all counties in the U.S. was developed. Methods The EQI was developed in four parts: domain identification; data source acquisition; variab...

Under the Clean Water Act, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) collects information from states on intended use and impairment of each water body. We explore the feasibility of using these data, collected for regulatory purposes, for public health analyses. Combining EPA impairment data and stream hydrology information we estimated the per...

This chapter identifies the role environmental tracking plays in identifying public health water hazard and water quality issues. It outlines public health issues to be examined and provides an integrated overview of water and diseases by combining knowledge of the hydrologic cycle, which describes how water serves as a significant component of exp...

The relationship between environmental conditions and human health varies by environmental media. In order to account for multiple ambient environmental conditions, we constructed an Environmental Quality Index (EQI) for health research. We used county-level data for the United States representing five environmental domains (air, water, land, built...

Rotavirus infection causes a significant proportion of diarrhea in infants and young children worldwide leading to dehydration, hospitalization, and in some cases death. Rotavirus infection represents a significant burden of disease in developing countries, such as those in South Asia. We conducted a meta-analysis to examine how patterns of rotavir...

Waterborne gastrointestinal (GI) illnesses demonstrate seasonal increases associated with water quality and meteorological characteristics. However, few studies have been conducted on the association of hydrological parameters, such as streamflow, and seasonality of GI illnesses. Streamflow is correlated with biological contamination and can be use...