Laura

Research Expertise and Interest

environmental health sciences

Research Description

Laura (Layla) Kwong is an assistant professor in the School of Public Health.  Her work with the Global Environmental Health Equity Lab focuses on identifying pathways of disease transmission; developing products and services to reduce exposure to climate change, air pollution, pathogens, and irritants; and evaluating intervention impacts on child health.

In the News

Largest study of its kind finds face masks reduce COVID-19

Wearing face masks, particularly surgical masks, is truly effective in reducing the spread of COVID-19 in community settings, finds a new study led by researchers from Yale University, Stanford Medical School, the University of California, Berkeley, and the nonprofit Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA).

Featured in the Media

Please note: The views and opinions expressed in these articles are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or positions of UC Berkeley.
September 2, 2021

Massive randomized study is proof that surgical masks limit coronavirus spread, authors say

The Washington Post
Adam Taylor and Ben Guarino
The authors of a study based on an enormous randomized research project in Bangladesh say their results offer the best evidence yet that widespread wearing of surgical masks can limit the spread of the coronavirus in communities. The preprint paper, which tracked more than 340,000 adults across 600 villages in rural Bangladesh, is by far the largest randomized study on the effectiveness of masks at limiting the spread of coronavirus infections. The study's authors — led by principal investigators Jason Abaluck, Laura Kwong, an assistant professor of environmental health sciences at Berkeley's School of Public Health, Steve Luby, Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak and Ashley Styczynski — are a globe-spanning team that includes researchers from Yale, Stanford and the Bangladeshi nonprofit GreenVoice.
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