John Balmes, M.D., is professor of medicine at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and professor of environmental health sciences in the School of Public Health at University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley). He is an attending physician in the Division of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (OEM) and the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at San Francisco General Hospital (SFGH).
Dr. Balmes completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Illinois as a psychology major. He attended medical school and did his training in internal medicine at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine before moving to Yale University, for his training in pulmonary diseases and critical care medicine. He has been on the faculty of UCSF since 1986 and the faculty of the UC Berkeley School of Public Health since 2002 engaged in research, teaching and patient care. During this time, he has served as program director for the UCSF OEM residency, chief of the UCSF Division of OEM at SFGH, and director of the UCSF human exposure laboratory. He currently is director of the Northern California Center for Occupational and Environmental Health (a consortium of programs at UC Berkeley, Univeristy of California, Davis and UCSF) as well as the UC Berkeley-UCSF Joint Medical Program.
Dr. Balmes has studied the effects of exposures to occupational agents and air pollution on respiratory, cardiovascular and metabolic health for 39 years. He has collaborated on studies of household and outdoor air pollution and wildfire smoke for the many years. Dr. Balmes has served as the Physician Member of the California Air Resources Board since 2008, and has volunteered with the American Lung Association for over 35 years.
Media interested in scheduling an interview with Dr. Balmes may contact Media@Lung.org.
