The Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future—working toward a healthy, equitable, resilient food system from within the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering.
Center for a Livable Future Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health 111 Market Place, Suite 840 Baltimore, MD 21202 Website Facebook Twitter Linkedin
25.04.2012 CLF teamed up with the Video and Film Arts Department at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) to produce Out to Pasture: The Future of Farming? films in 2010, which explore important issues in our food system. CLF and MICA also collaborated to produce a film about sustainable food animal production entitled Out to Pasture: The Future of Farming? (34 minutes) CLF’s Leo Horrigan plays the role of producer for Out to Pasture and Allen Moore, a MICA professor and independent filmmaker, directs the film. Out to Pasture contrasts industrial-style confined animal production with farms that raise food animals outdoors in diversified operations, striving to be sustainable. Several of these pasture-based farmers are profiled and they tell their own vibrant stories of bucking the trends in farming. They discuss how they got started in farming (three transitioned from confinement operations), what’s important about their farming methods, how their conventional-farm neighbors view them, how to keep young people on the farm, the future of the food system, and other compelling topics. The film also features Robert Lawrence, director of CLF; and John Ikerd, a leading thinker on sustainable agriculture issues
22.05.2020 In the face of threats to our farming future such as climate change, people are innovating to protect and regenerate our most vital resources – soil, water, seeds, and our farmer workforce. Growing Solutions features a centuries-old water conservation method, a farmer who’s growing topsoil faster than most thought possible, a seed-saving high school, a farmer training program for military veterans, and researchers who are developing a perennial style of agriculture that mimics the prairie.
30.04.2104 The Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future has been applying big-picture thinking to the food system since 1996, and has been educating the public, policymakers and advocates on key food system issues. The Center has focused on issues such as the overuse of antibiotics in agriculture and the resulting increase in antibiotic-resistant organisms, the public health risks of arsenic in some agricultural antibiotics, and the “food desert” phenomenon whereby some communities cannot easily access healthy foods. The Center funds research on these and other food system issues, and also tries to translate its research findings into policy. It often partners with impacted communities to both conduct the research and disseminate the findings.
3.05.2016 Food Frontiers showcases six projects from around the United States that are increasing access to healthy food in varied ways – from a pioneering farm-to-school project to creative supermarket financing to cooking classes in a doctor’s office and a teen-managed grocery store. This 36-minute documentary film – produced by the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future – is part of the FoodSpan curriculum, which provides an overview of the food system for high school students. http://www.foodspanlearning.org
6.02.2018 Farmed Seafood and Livestock Stack Up Differently Using Alternate Feed Efficiency Measure Study finds retention of protein and calories in feed similar for major aquaculture and livestock species
Bob Lawrence, Founding Director
In 1996, together with a team of people both inside and outside the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Bob established the Center for a Livable Future (CLF) and began recruiting staff. From its modest beginnings in 1996 to its burgeoning staff today, the Center has continually focused on using the best science available to bring to light the relationships among agriculture, diet, environment and public health.
The vision that emerged for the Center was one that combined education and research with advocacy and outreach in an academic environment-“not just a think tank, but a ‘do-tank‘.“
Early in his career, Bob worked as an internal medicine physician, and served as an Epidemic Intelligence Service officer with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In the early 1970s, he helped establish a comprehensive health care system in the rural South funded by the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) while serving on the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. At Harvard Medical School he developed the Division of Primary Care and served as chief of medicine at Cambridge Hospital.
Bob’s accomplishments and honors include co-founding Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) in 1986 and taking part in many international investigations of human rights abuses. PHR shared the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize for its work to eliminate the use of anti-personnel landmines. Bob is an emeritus member of PHR’s board of directors.
In his position as director of Health Sciences at the Rockefeller Foundation before joining the faculty of JHSPH, Bob worked with colleagues directing programs in Agricultural Sciences, Population Sciences, and Environmental Sciences and learned about the multiple connections among agriculture, food production, population, the environment and public health.
Bob says he is gratified by the increased public attention to food system issues in recent years, but he says his greatest satisfaction is working with talented, enthusiastic people who are engaged in meaningful work.
“In my career since finishing medical school, I kept returning to the impacts of diet, nutrition, environmental exposures and social justice on people’s health,” Bob says. “This had been playing a more prominent role in my thinking and was in large part responsible for my decision to join the faculty at Johns Hopkins. Establishing the Center provided a serendipitous opportunity to address complex public health problems in a systematic way.”
