The impact of the environment on health will be the focus Wednesday, April 5, of two National Public Health Week seminars, hosted by UC Davis' Department of Public Health Sciences.

Guest speaker for both presentations, which are free and open to the public, will be Richard Jackson, adjunct professor of environmental health sciences and health policy and management at UC Berkeley and chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics' committee on the environment.

Jackson, a physician, is an authority on the effects of toxic chemicals on health, especially that of children, and on how housing, transportation, agricultural, environmental and economic policy shape public health policy.

He served from 1994-2003 as director of the National Center for Environmental Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and from 2003-2004 as the California Department of Health Services' health officer.

Jackson will speak from noon to 1 p.m. Wednesday in Sacramento at UC Davis Health System in Room 326 of the Ticon II Building, located at 2516 Stockton Blvd. This presentation, directed at an audience composed primarily of pediatricians, will explore how children's environment affects their health.

He will speak again Wednesday from 5:30 to 7 p.m. in Room 180 of the Medical Sciences 1C building at UC Davis. This talk, directed at an audience of mostly medical students and campus faculty, will focus on the impact of the environment on health.

National Public Health Week 2006, which is April 3-9, is focusing on children and the "built environment," which includes houses, buildings and roads, according to the American Public Health Association.