Author Allen co-authored the book Healthy Buildings: How Indoor Spaces Can Make You Sick - or Keep You Well (Harvard Press), with John Macomber from
Harvard Business School.
The New York Times named the book a “Top 8 Book for Healthy Living,” and
Fortune named it a book of the year. He has also written for
The New York Times,
The Washington Post,
The Boston Globe,
The Atlantic, and
Harvard Business Review.
Service Allen is a member of the Scientific and Medical Editorial Review Panel of the
American Lung Association, Associate Editor for the Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology, and Editor for the journal Indoor Environments.
COVID-19 Allen served on The Lancet COVID-19 Commission and was Chair of The Lancet COVID-19 Commission Task Force on Safe Work, Safe School, and Safe Travel. He served on Harvard's Coronavirus Advisory and Governor Charlie Baker's (MA) Medical Advisory Board and was an advisor to The White House COVID-19 Response Team. During the
COVID-19 pandemic, much of his public work concerned the role of building factors in
public health, especially in the context of schools and the workforce returning to office spaces after an extended period of
remote working during the pandemic. He publicized these considerations through over 60 op-eds in major publications, as well as with appearances on television news programs,
Climate Change Allen studies the role that buildings play in climate change and strategies to off-set building-related emissions. He has published several articles on the climate and health co-benefits of energy-efficiency measures in buildings. He authored an article in
Harvard Business Review titled, "Designing buildings that are both well-ventilated and green," that provides recommendations for how to achieve a healthy building that is also energy-efficient. Allen is a faculty member with the Norman Foster Institute's Programme on Sustainable Cities.
Healthy buildings Allen created Harvard's 'The 9 Foundations of a Healthy Building', a report that synthesized the scientific research on factors that lead to better health indoors. He keynoted the first ever White House Summit on Indoor Air Quality. JPMC tapped him to advise on healthy building strategies for their new headquarters at 270 Park Avenue in NYC. Allen holds a patent for "Intelligent Building Monitoring" and H.E.A.A.L., which is a system and algorithm for analyzing real-time data from indoor air quality sensors that bins data and scores building health performance into: Health-Optimized, Excellent, Action, Alert, Limit. == Forever Chemicals ==