New research explores critical intersections between environment and human health. A study demonstrated how wildfire smoke from Canadian fires severely degrades air quality across the U.S. Midwest, raising public health concerns. Concurrently, investigations reveal hospitalized malnourished children in Niger are acquiring highly drug-resistant E. coli strains, spotlighting antimicrobial resistance’s public health threat amid vulnerability. Other work developed advanced computational frameworks to assess individual environmental exposures to pollutants, contributing to more precise health risk evaluations.