Thomas Clasen
Professor
Faculty, Environmental Health
Jointly Appointed, Epidemiology
Jointly Appointed, Global Health
Rose Salamone Gangarosa Chair in Sanitation and Safe Water
After practicing international corporate law for 20 years, I returned to school and obtained an MSc in control of infectious diseases and a PhD in environmental health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. I joined the faculty of the LSHTM in 2004, and became Professor of Water, Sanitation and Health. I moved to the Rollins School of Public Health in 2013 as Professor of Environmental Health and Rose Salamone Gangarosa Chair of Sanitation and Safe Water, and served as Interim Chair during the COVID months March-December 2020. I lead a group of researchers whose work consists mainly of health impact evaluations of water, sanitation and household air pollution interventions in low-income countries. Publications include more than 15 RCTs in Latin America, Africa and South Asia; Cochrane reviews of water quality and sanitation interventions to prevent diarrhoeal disease and enteric infection; methods papers on improving the rigor of evalutating environmental health interventions; cost and cost-effectiveness analyses; and policy analyses of global environmental health initiatives. Current field research includes an evaluation of a rural water and sanitation programmes in Orissa; a randomized controlled trial to assess the impact of a water and sanitation intervention among informal settlements in Fiji and Indonesia; an evaluation of a large-scale deployment of water filters as part of a national program in Rwanda; and the $32M HAPIN trial to assess the health effects of household air pollution in India, Rwanda, Guatemala and Peru.
Contact Information
CNR 2009, 1518 Clifton Road, NE
Atlanta , GA 30322
1518 Clifton Road, NE
Phone: 404-727-3480
Fax: 404-727-8744
Email: TCLASEN@emory.edu
Areas of Interest
- Air Pollution
- Evaluation
- Global Health
- Health Outcomes
- Infectious Disease
- Safe Water, Sanitation and Hygiene
Education
- JD 1981, Georgetown University Law Center
- MSc 2002, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
- PhD 2006, University of London
Courses Taught
- EHS 799R: Dissertation Research
- EH 571: GEH Policy:Power,Sci.&Justice
- EH 500: Perspectives/Environ Health
- EH 549: Crit.Analys.WaterSanit.Hygiene
Publications
- Bauza V, Ye W, Liao J, Majorin F, Clasen T, 2023, Interventions to improve sanitation for preventing diarrhoea, Cochrane Database Syst Rev. , CD013328,
- Jennyfer Wolf, Sydney Hubbard, Michael Brauer, Argaw Ambelu, Benjamin F Arnold, Robert Bain, Valerie Bauza, Joe Brown, Bethany A Caruso, Thomas Clasen, John M Colford Jr, Matthew C Freeman, Bruce Gordon, Richard B Johnston, Andrew Mertens, Annette Prüss-Ustün, Ian Ross, Jeffrey Stanaway, Jeff T Zhao, Oliver Cumming, Sophie Boisson, 2022, Effectiveness of interventions to improve drinking water, sanitation, and handwashing with soap on risk of diarrhoeal disease in children in low-income and middle-income settings: a systematic review and meta-analysis, The Lancet, 400, 48-59
- T.F. Clasen, H.H. Chang, L.M. Thompson, M.A. Kirby, K. Balakrishnan, A. Díaz?Artiga, J.P. McCracken, G. Rosa, K. Steenland, A. Younger, V. Aravindalochanan, D.B. Barr, A. Castañaza, Y. Chen, M. Chiang, M.L. Clark, S. Garg, S. Hartinger, S. Jabbarzadeh, M.A. Johnson, D.-Y. Kim, A.E. Lovvorn, E.D. McCollum, L. Monroy, L.H. Moulton, A. Mukeshimana, K. Mukhopadhyay, L.P. Naeher, F. Ndagijimana, A. Papageorghiou, R. Piedrahita, A. Pillarisetti, N. Puttaswamy, A. Quinn, U. Ramakrishnan, S. Sambandam, S.S. Sinharoy, G. Thangavel, L.J. Underhill, L.A. Waller, J. Wang, K.N. Williams, J.P. Rosenthal, W. Checkley, and J.L. Peel, for the HAPIN Investigators, 2022, Liquefied Petroleum Gas or Biomass for Cooking and Effects on Birth Weight, New England Journal of Medicine, 387, 1735-46
- Johnson MA, Steenland K, Piedrahita R, et al. , 2020, Air Pollutant Exposure and Stove Use Assessment Methods for the Household Air Pollution Intervention Network (HAPIN) Trial, Environ Health Perspectives , 128,
- Sheela S Sinharoy, Thomas Clasen, Reynaldo Martorell , 2020, Air pollution and stunting: a missing link?, The Lancet Global Health, 8, e472–e475
- Naser AB, Rahman M, Unicomb L, Parvez SM, Doza S, Khan GB, Islam S, Ahmed KM, Anand S, Luby S, Shamsudduha M, Gribble M, Narayan KMV, Clasen T , 2020, Associations of drinking rainwater with macro-mineral intake and cardiometabolic health: a pooled cohort analysis in Bangladesh, 2016-2019, NPJ Cleanwater , ,
- Barr DB, Puttaswamy N, Jaacks LM, et al. , 2020, Design and Rationale of the Biomarker Center of the Household Air Pollution Intervention Network (HAPIN) Trial, Environ Health Perspectives, ,
- Clasen T, Checkley W, Peel JL, et al. , 2020, Design and Rationale of the HAPIN Study: A Multicountry Randomized Controlled Trial to Assess the Effect of Liquefied Petroleum Gas Stove and Continuous Fuel Distribution, Environ Health Perspectives , 128,
- Goodman D, Crocker ME, Pervaiz F, McCollum ED, Steenland K, Simkovich SM, Miele CH, Hammitt LL, Herrera P, Zar HJ, Campbell H, Lanata CF, McCracken JP, Thompson LM, Rosa G, Kirby MA, Garg S, Thangavel G, Thanasekaraan V, Balakrishnan K, King C, Clasen T, Checkley W; HAPIN Investigators. , 2019, Challenges in the diagnosis of paediatric pneumonia in intervention field trials: recommendations from a pneumonia field trial working group , Lancet Respir Med, 7, 1068-1083
- Kirby MA, Nagel CL, Rosa G, Zambrano LD, Musafiri S, Ngirabega JD, Thomas EA, Clasen T , 2019, Effects of a large-scale distribution of water filters and natural draft rocket-style cookstoves on diarrhea and acute respiratory infection: A cluster-randomized controlled trial in Western Province, Rwanda, PLoS Med, 16, e1002812
- Null C, Stewart CP, Pickering AJ, Dentz HN, Arnold BF, Arnold CD, Benjamin-Chung J, Clasen T, Dewey KG, Fernald L, Hubbard AE, Kariger P, Lin A, Luby SP, Mertens A, Njenga SM, Nyambane G, Ram PK, Colford JM, 2018, Effects of water quality, sanitation, handwashing, and nutritional. Interventions on diarrhoea and child growth in rural Kenya: A cluster-randomised controlled trial, Lancet Global Health , ,
- Oswald WE, Stewart AEP, Kramer MR, Endeshaw T, Zerihun M, Melak B, Sata E, Gessesse D, Teferi T, Tadesse Z, Guadie B, King JD, Emerson PM, Callahan EK, Flanders WD, Moe CL, Clasen T, 2017, Community sanitation usage and active trachoma in children aged 1-9 years in Amhara Region, Ethiopia, following 5 years of the SAFE strategy, Bull World Health Organ, 95, 250-260
- Sinharoy SS, Schmidt WP, Wendt R, Mfura L, Crossett E, Grépin KA, Jack W, Rwabufigiri BN, Habyarimana J, Clasen T, 2017, Effect of community health clubs on child diarrhoea in western Rwanda: cluster-randomised controlled trial, Lancet Global Health, 5, e699-e709
- Clasen T, Boisson S, Routray P, Torondel B, Bell M, Cumming O, Ensink J, Freeman M, Jenkins M, Odagiri M, Ray S, Sinha A, Suar M, Schmidt WP, 2015, Effectiveness of a rural sanitation programme on diarrhoea, soil-transmitted helminth infection, and child malnutrition in Odisha, India: a cluster-randomised trial, Lancet Glob Health, 2, 645-53