PEHSU Region 1 New England Directors were Dr. Marissa Hauptman and Dr. Alan Woolf were cited on page 40 of the MAHA assessment that came out on May 22, 2025: The MAHA Report. The report features four main sections: “The Shift to Ultra-Processed Foods”, “The Cumulative Load of Chemicals in Our Environment”, “The Crisis of Child Behavior in the Digital Age”, and “The Overmedicalization of Our Kids”. In section 2, “The Cumulative Load of Chemicals in Our Environment”, the assessment highlights “Why Children Are Uniquely Vulnerable to Environmental Chemicals”. One of the factors attributed to the heighten risk children face is accelerated brain development:
“Early childhood is marked by rapid brain development, with up to one million new neural connections forming every second.* Toxic exposures during this time can derail neurodevelopment, leading to lifelong learning disabilities and behavioral disorders.*”
-The MAHA Report, May 2025
Dr. Hauptman and Dr. Woolf’s publication from 2017 “Childhood Ingestions of Environmental Toxins: What Are the Risks?” is cited. In their publication, Drs. Hauptman and Woolf highlight children’s “smaller size (and proportionately larger dose of ingested toxins)” and provide guidance around mitigation to example environmental hazards in water, home furnishings, pesticides, food, and others. The doctors emphasize that “pediatric care providers can integrate environmental health topics into their well-child care practices, offering guidance and resources to parents concerned with reducing the risks to their children posed by hazards in their homes, daycare centers, preschools, schools, and the other environments in which they spend time.”*
The follow-up recommendations to The Maha Report are expected in August 2025.
About Dr. Hauptman and Dr. Woolf
Marissa Hauptman, MD, MPH, FAAP is a mother, practicing board-certified general pediatrician, environmental medicine physician-scientist, and co-director for the Boston Children’s Pediatric Environmental Health Center and the Region 1 New England Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Unit. Each week, in addition to her general pediatrics practice, she provides multidisciplinary clinical care for children with lead poisoning, mold exposure, asthma and other environmentally-mediated disease processes. Her career is dedicated to mitigating environmental health challenges for pediatric and reproductive-aged populations through the intersection of public health and medicine. Her work particularly focuses on the importance of systematically integrating and leveraging geospatial and biological markers of environmental exposures and screening tools into pediatric medicine. She has an NIH/NIEHS K23 Career Development Award and recently became an inaugural Chief Medical Advisor to the Bureau of Climate and Environmental Health at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health.
Dr. Hauptman has leveraged her expertise as a physician-scientist in pediatric environmental medicine to make important clinical advances and innovations in the field of childhood lead poisoning and other environmental and climate justice issues. She has received numerous local, regional and national awards for her research and dedication to addressing environmental and climate injustices for pediatric populations. These accolades include the Boston Combined Residency Program Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Faculty Honor Roll (2022-23), the Rhode Island Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program Healthy Housing Award (2007), the American Academy of Pediatrics Section on Allergy and Immunology Outstanding Abstract Award (2016), the Academic Pediatric Association Fellow Research Award (2015) and the Academic Pediatric Association Michael Shannon Research Award (2017).
Alan Woolf, MD, MPH, FAAP, FACMT, FAACT is Co-Director of the Pediatric Environmental Health Center at Boston Children’s Hospital and its Pediatric Environmental Health Fellowship Training Program and Co-Director of the Region 1 New England Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Unit. He is a Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Woolf is a past-president of both the American Academy of Clinical Toxicology (AACT) and the American Association of Poison Control Centers. In 2018, Dr. Woolf received the Career Achievement Award from the AACT. In 2019, he was named the Louis Roche Lecturer (its highest career award) by the European Association of Poisons Centers and Clinical Toxicologists. Dr. Woolf has published extensively on childhood poisonings, poisoning prevention and toxic reactions to heavy metals. He is the Medical Editor of two books: The Children’s Hospital Guide to Your Child’s Health and Development and most recently: The History of Modern Clinical Toxicology (Elsevier 2022).
*References
- Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University. (n.d.). Brain Architecture. Retrieved from https://developingchild.harvard.edu/keyconcept/brain-architecture/.
- Hauptman, M., & Woolf, A. D. (2017). Childhood ingestions of environmental toxins: What are the risks? Pediatric Annals, 46(10), e466–e471. https://doi.org/10.3928/19382359-20170925-01.
- Sapbamrer, R., & Hongsibsong, S. (2019). Effects of prenatal and postnatal exposure to organophosphate pesticides on childneurodevelopment in different age groups: A systematic review. Environmental Science and Pollution Research, 26, 18267–18290.