The EMPOWER program: a history and guide for increasing diversity using integrated research and education.

What do tiny black-and-white-striped zebrafish have in common with human beings? As it turns out, quite a lot. The zebrafish and other aquatic model organisms are helping researchers to better understand complex biomedical questions including how humans develop and are affected by toxic exposures. This work is the focus of the and Freshwater Biomedical Sciences Center (MFBSC) at the University of Wisconsin (UW) –Milwaukee, an NIEHS environmental health sciences center. “Most investigators who work with living systems use mammalian species as model systems,” says director David Petering, a professor of chemistry at UW–Milwaukee. “So, up until recently, general toxicologists wondered what in the world aquatic organisms could contribute to the study of environmental health and toxicology. It turns out that, historically, aquatic organisms have been enormously important in the development of biomedical research.” Petering notes, for example, that most of the basic understanding of how nerve impulses are conducted arose from studies of the large nerve axon of the squid. The MFBSC is one of four aquatic research centers funded by the NIEHS. It is located in the Wisconsin Aquatic Technology and Environmental Research (WATER) Institute at UW–Milwaukee. (In addition to UW–Milwaukee faculty, the center draws researchers from several other Wisconsin institutions, including Marquette University, the Medical College of Wisconsin, and UW–Madison.) The center’s genesis dates to the late 1970s, when former NIEHS director David Rall promoted the use of aquatic systems to study human and environmental health issues. The Milwaukee center was the first MFBSC to form. It has since evolved into an advanced aquatic animal facility with laboratories supporting four core research areas: signal transduction and endocrine disruption, metals toxicology and neurotoxicology, the use of zebrafish as a model organism for developmental toxicology, and behavioral toxicology. Additionally, the MFSBC supports a pilot project program, which offers researchers an opportunity to explore the utility of aquatic models in environmental health research and to further develop methods that are already in use.

I am pleased to present “our” new strategic plan for the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS 2012). I say that it’s “our” plan because the entire document reflects tremendous thought, discussion, and sharing of ideas by hundreds of scientists and community stakeholders, and it speaks to the entire field of environmental health research. This plan is about what we will strive to accomplish together as we devote ourselves to research that, in my opinion, has the greatest chance for preventing disease and for improving health throughout the world. As reflected in the new strategic plan (NIEHS 2012), the NIEHS has a fresh vision, not because our values have changed but because our research has been so successful—and many of you have made a huge contribution to that progress. New technologies and increasing knowledge bring exciting new opportunities each and every year. The NIEHS’s new strategic plan builds upon the accomplishments and vision that came before. The NIEHS has come a long way in making environmental health research responsive to the needs and concerns of the American people— to make environmental health part of the public health debate. This continues to be a source of motivation and purpose for NIEHS staff and our research partners. Environmental justice is an everlasting core value for NIEHS research. In the past few years, we at the NIEHS have made some important progress in exposure science, supporting new technologies for sensor devices and bioinformatics. We have been embracing new science such as epigenetics and exposure phenotyping, focusing on interdisciplinary research and translational research. In addition, our clinical research unit is now up and running. As the NIEHS moves forward, our overall goal is to make the institute, including the National Toxicology Program (NTP), the foremost trusted source of environmental health knowledge, leading the field in innovation and the application of research to solve health problems. Our new vision statement (NIEHS 2012) captures our collective dreams and aspirations, and reflects our strong commitment to making a real difference: The vision of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences is to provide global leadership for innovative research that improves public health by preventing disease and disability from our environment. What this means in practical terms is that we are pursuing some of the “big influences” that have been understudied, all of which interact with traditional environmental exposures: the microbiome, for example, and inflammation pathways, immunological pathways, nutrition, and epigenetic processes. We also want to lead the process of defining the “exposome,” which is the totality of exposure encountered by humans. We have elevated the NTP to the divisional level within the NIEHS. And we will continue to integrate our toxicology research with our excellent basic and translational science programs, not because I am a toxicologist but because the NTP is a problem-solving program—a truly translational component of the NIEHS. For example, the NTP is part of our consortium on bisphenol A, contributing to the scientific deliberations, right along with our intramural scientists and our grantees. The NTP is leading the Tox21 initiative along with the National Institute of Health’s National Center for Comparative Genomics, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the Food and Drug Administration. This high throughput testing program shows great promise not only as a new and faster method but also for moving toxicology into a predictive science. The NTP is moving beyond the traditional approaches of testing one chemical at a time and are taking on the significant challenge of evaluating mixtures. We are also looking at the effects of exposures throughout the life span, expanding our research and testing to include prenatal exposures and how they may link to adult disease. It is clear that there are multiple windows of susceptibility and that exposures early in life may have long-lasting consequences to both health and disease. Finally, the antiquated idea that the dose makes the poison is overly simplistic. The newest research clearly shows that biology is affected by low doses of chemicals, often within the range of general population exposure, and that these biological changes can be harmful, especially during periods of development. Therefore, low-dose research must go hand in hand with our life-span approach. The NIEHS’s job doesn’t stop with the publication of scientific results. We also have an obligation to help translate the nation’s research investment into public health intervention, new policy, and preventive clinical practice. To be successful, we at the NIEHS need to conduct and support the best science, whether it is led by an individual researcher or a multidisiplinary team, and this means working together with all of our partners. We thank everyone who joined us in our strategic planning process. We appreciate your commitment and support.

The Adverse Outcome Pathway (AOP) framework is a foundational approach in environmental pollutant research, encompassing the detrimental effects of pollutants across biological levels from molecules to populations. Toxicogenomics (TGx), which integrates omics technologies with toxicology, plays a crucial role in AOPs by elucidating the relationships between chemical exposure, molecular initiating events (MIEs), and key events (KEs) across various biological levels using animal and cell model-based data. However, since some MIEs (e.g. changes in specific enzyme activities or receptor binding/activation) cannot be confirmed by omics data alone, TGx data must be integrated with classical enzymatic assays, receptor function analyses, and related methods when constructing AOPs to ensure comprehensive, accurate identification of MIEs and their associated KEs. Epidemiology examines the links between environmental exposures, KEs and adverse outcomes (AOs) in human populations, contributing to the understanding of population-level disease outcomes. With the advent of big data, both epidemiology and TGx studies have generated substantial datasets. To synthesize these extensive data resources, meta-analysis emerges as a robust tool, effectively integrating environmental epidemiology and TGx data to provide a coherent and strong evidence base, revealing the correlative and causative relationships between environmental pollutants and human health outcomes. This review focuses on the role of meta-analysis in environmental health research, particularly on integrating environmental health epidemiology and TGx data. Additionally, we explore the challenges in applying meta-analysis and discuss future directions. Our aim is to provide researchers with a comprehensive understanding of meta-analysis methods and processes in environmental health research, encouraging wider adoption and further development of this analytical approach.

Background:Environmental health (EH) professionals, one of the largest segments of the public health workforce, are responsible for delivery of essential environmental public health services. The challenges facing these professionals and research needs to improve EH practice are not fully understood, but 26% of EH professionals working in health departments of the United States plan to retire in 5 y, while only 6% of public health students are currently pursuing EH concentrations.Objectives:A groundbreaking initiative was recently launched to understand EH practice in health departments of the United States. This commentary article aims to identify priority EH practice challenges and related research needs for health departments.Methods:A horizon scanning approach was conducted in which challenges facing EH professionals were provided by 1,736 respondents working at health departments who responded to a web-based survey fielded in November 2017. Thematic analyses of the responses and determining the frequency at which respondents reported specific issues and opportunities identified primary EH topic areas. These topic areas and related issues informed focus group discussions at an in-person workshop held in Anaheim, California. The purpose of the in-person workshop was to engage each of the topic areas and issues, through facilitated focus groups, leading to the formation of four to five related problem statements for each EH topic.Discussion:EH professionals are strategically positioned to diagnose, intervene, and prevent public health threats. Focus group engagement resulted in 29 priority problem statements partitioned among 6 EH topic areas: a) drinking water quality, b) wastewater management, c) healthy homes, d) food safety, e) vectors and public health pests, and f) emerging issues. This commentary article identifies priority challenges and related research needs to catalyze effective delivery of essential environmental public health services for common EH program areas in health departments. An unprecedented initiative to revitalize EH practice with timely and strategic recommendations for student and professional training, nontraditional partnerships, and basic and translational research activities is recommended. https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP5161

Environmental health research in the US has shown that racial and ethnic minorities and members of low-socioeconomic groups, are disproportionately burdened by harmful environmental exposures, in their homes, workplace, and neighborhood environments that impact their overall health and well-being. Systemic racism is a fundamental cause of these disproportionate exposures and associated health effects. To invigorate and inform current efforts on environmental justice and to raise awareness of environmental racism, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) hosted a workshop where community leaders, academic researchers, and NIEHS staff shared perspectives and discussed ways to inform future work to address health disparities. To share best practices learned and experienced in partnerships between academic researchers and communities that are addressing environmental racism across the US; and to outline critical needs and future actions for NIEHS, other federal agencies, and anyone who is interested in conducting or funding research that addresses environmental racism and advances health equity for all communities. Through this workshop with community leaders and researchers funded by NIEHS, we learned that partnerships between academics and communities hold great promise for addressing environmental racism; however, there are still profound obstacles. To overcome these barriers, translation of research into plain language and health-protective interventions is needed. Structural changes are also needed in current funding mechanisms and training programs across federal agencies. We also learned the importance of leveraging advances in technology to develop creative solutions that can protect public health.

Encyclopedia of Environmental Health

Purpose of ReviewThis review aims to explore how circadian rhythms influence disease susceptibility and potentially modify the effect of environmental exposures. We aimed to identify biomarkers commonly used in environmental health research that have also been the subject of chronobiology studies, in order to review circadian rhythms of relevance to environmental health and determine if time-of-day is an important factor to consider in environmental health studies. Moreover, we discuss opportunities for studying how environmental exposures may interact with circadian rhythms to structure disease pathology and etiology.Recent FindingsIn recent years, the study of circadian rhythms in mammals has flourished. Animal models revealed that all body tissues have circadian rhythms. In humans, circadian rhythms were also shown to exist at multiple levels of organization: molecular, cellular, and physiological processes, including responding to oxidative stress, cell trafficking, and sex hormone production, respectively. Together, these rhythms are an essential component of human physiology and can shape an individual’s susceptibility and response to disease.SummaryCircadian rhythms are relatively unexplored in environmental health research. However, circadian clocks control many physiological and behavioral processes that impact exposure pathways and disease systems. We believe this review will motivate new studies of (i) the impact of exposures on circadian rhythms, (ii) how circadian rhythms modify the effect of environmental exposures, and (iii) how time-of-day impacts our ability to observe the body’s response to exposure.

Environmental health research and the COVID-19 pandemic: A turning point towards sustainability

ObjectiveFederal, state, and private research agencies and organizations have faced increasing administrative and public demand for performance measurement. Historically, performance measurement predominantly consisted of near-term outputs measured through bibliometrics. The recent focus is on accountability for investment based on long-term outcomes. Developing measurable outcome-based metrics for research programs has been particularly challenging, because of difficulty linking research results to spatially and temporally distant outcomes. Our objective in this review is to build a logic model and associated metrics through which to measure the contribution of environmental health research programs to improvements in human health, the environment, and the economy.Data sourcesWe used expert input and literature research on research impact assessment.Data extractionWith these sources, we developed a logic model that defines the components and linkages between extramural environmental health research grant programs and the outputs and outcomes related to health and social welfare, environmental quality and sustainability, economics, and quality of life.Data synthesisThe logic model focuses on the environmental health research portfolio of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) Division of Extramural Research and Training. The model delineates pathways for contributions by five types of institutional partners in the research process: NIEHS, other government (federal, state, and local) agencies, grantee institutions, business and industry, and community partners.ConclusionsThe model is being applied to specific NIEHS research applications and the broader research community. We briefly discuss two examples and discuss the strengths and limits of outcome-based evaluation of research programs.

Environmental pollutants and exosomes: A new paradigm in environmental health and disease

At the New Mexico Center for Environmental Health Sciences (NMCEHS), community concerns and relationships are as much at the center’s foundation as the latest research techniques. According to center director Scott Burchiel, the unique populations of New Mexico—including a high number of Hispanics and Native American tribes, pueblos, and sovereign nations—steer the center’s course. “One of the things we have tried to do is to determine what these populations’ concerns are for environmental health, because we want our center to be focused on environmental public health, and we want to work on basic research projects that address issues that people in this region are particularly interested in,” he says. Based in Albuquerque as a partnership of The University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center and the Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute (LRRI), the NIEHS-funded center comprises major research cores in environmental cancer and oxidative stress, cardiovascular toxicology, environmental lung disease, and population health and epidemiology. The center also includes world-class facility cores (particularly for inhalation toxicology), a pilot project program to provide funding for small innovative research studies, and an unusually strong community outreach and education program (COEP). Community input is essential, as is trust. “We have investigators who may have certain interests for certain kinds of projects and want to work with communities,” says Burchiel. “But when we go to the community, we find out that [the community has] a different agenda, different interests. We’ve been learning how to work with communities since we’ve had this environmental health center.” It’s a process that involves a lot of development of community relationships and trust relationships. Burchiel says that investigating environmental health problems such as asthma requires a broad definition of environment. He says, “In our center, we define the environment quite broadly. It includes nutritional, social, behavioral, economic, and built environment components. . . . We have not only environmental epidemiologists [but] also social epidemiologists who help us look at social factors in assessing economic and poverty factors.”

The discipline of environmental health may be described as the identification and characterization of hazards and the development, implementation and evaluation of appropriate intervention strategies to limit physical, chemical, biological, sociological and other hazards and associated risks in our environment. Prediction and prevention of potential future hazards and associated risks is also often an important role for the discipline of environmental health. The term “hazardscape” has been used to describe the net result of both natural and human-made (anthropogenic) hazards and the cumulative risks that they pose across a given geographical area. This includes the interactions among nature, society, and technology at a variety of spatial scales, creating a mosaic of risks that affect places and the people who live there. The concept of hazardscape has been used in the social sciences to broaden the consideration of hazards to include sociological and psychological issues such as perception of risks, personal and societal experiences and associated response cultures as well as trust of hazard/risk responses as implemented by governmental or non-governmental agencies. Use of a hazardscape approach includes the “discursive” element (verbal discourse, or how people talk about hazards and risks), which may include the collective risk perception of hazards on a community level.1,2 In the discipline of environmental health, a hazard may be defined as the physical, chemical, biological, and other condition that may result in damage to human health and/or our environment. Risk may be defined as the likelihood of exposure to a hazard, which may then result in damage. This may be expressed in a diagram where the intersection of overlapping hazard, exposure and vulnerability represents the risk.3 In social science applications, vulnerability may be defined as the susceptibility of individual persons or a community to suffer from hazard exposure in a given geographical location. However, in an environmental health context, vulnerability could be extended to the natural environment and its physical, chemical, and biological components. During 2012 and 2013, Environmental Health Insights contributors have addressed diverse hazards such as dioxin exposure, microbial water quality, atrazine and nitrate, ozone, socioeconomic status, the 9/11 disaster, and others. In past Environmental Health Insights editorials, I have attempted to broadly characterize both natural and anthropogenic hazards such as the 2010 Deepwater Horizon (BP) oil blowout and the 2011 Tohuku Japan earthquake and resulting tsunami as well as environmental health resilience to hazards. Could the discipline of environmental health benefit from lessons learned from a hazardscape approach and if so, how could this be accomplished? The “transdisciplinary” nature of the current discipline of environmental health seems to make it well suited to evaluate hazardscapes from geographical, physical, chemical, biological, sociological and psychological perspectives. (Transdisciplinary may be distinguished from the terms interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary by its use of multiple overlapping disciplines that may inform each other concerning environmental health hazards and risks.) The goal of a hazardscape approach appears to be to contextualize a topic within a range of hazards and social/economic vulnerability to these hazards. Due to its applied nature, environmental health researchers and practitioners are already engaged to a greater extent with their communities and community “stakeholders” than many other disciplines. However, we should recognize that this is not a unidirectional, academic approach, but rather a discourse about what hazards and risks the community feels are most important, and how they should be addressed. One concept applied to hazardscapes is that of marginalization, or the disproportionate hazard exposure and therefore risks to populations with relatively low socioeconomic status and reduced political power. An example could be location of wastewater treatment plants and/or landfills in geographic locations with human populations of lower socioeconomic status. However, in modern society, those persons with higher relative socioeconomic status may be able to live in higher hazard/risk areas such as shorelines due to their greater access to insurance and political power.4 When people see hazards as something separate from themselves and their geographic location (sometimes referred to as “acts of God”, or “acts of nature”), it may isolate us from our environment and the consequences of our living as an integral part of nature. While vulnerability to hazards may have a strong temporal or historical component (eg, the concept of a “100-year floodplain”), this concept may be less useful than previously assumed (eg, three “100-year” floods occurring within a decade, perhaps contributed to by the affects of global climate change).2,5,6 The existing “hegemony” (a dominant social/ political authority within a culture) may also influence strongly how hazards and related risks are perceived by the community. For example, if the hegemony promotes the idea that a wide range of human choices should be tolerated by a society in order to promote individual and societal freedom, individuals and groups may choose to accept more risks. While some of these risks may be managed through monetary savings or purchasing insurance, it is important to realize that some percentage of the cost is always shared by the society at large.7,8 Following some consideration we have identified at least three ways that we believe that the concept of hazardscape may be useful for the discipline of environmental health. Firstly, it is important for us to realize that hazards and risks are a regular, albeit not entirely predictable, part of our environment and that our personal choices affect the hazards to which we are exposed. This includes where and how we choose to live. Secondly, we have the ability to limit our risks by either accepting the losses that we may incur, establishing social support systems (eg, family, friends, churches), that may help us to “weather” hazardous events or purchasing insurance that is adequate to cover our losses (although some of those losses will be shared with our larger community). Finally, we should recognize that environmental hazards and risks are not distributed equitably among all socioeconomic levels and explore and consider ways of more equitably distributing hazards and risks to build a more just society. By improving the lives of the poorest and most underserved among us, we all become more resilient. This is particularly important in our rapidly changing global environment.

Environmental public health research: engaging communities

The public requires of the medical research community success. The public ultimately provides money for medical research for one purpose only—to generate improvements in patient care. Medical researchers, editors, and peer reviewers should be under no illusions: the public does not support research for the pleasure of watching a cultural event. If improved medical care is not delivered, support for medical research—and hence for medical journals—will dwindle and atrophy.—Horrobin1 The 2014 Lancet series about waste in research posed the question “Why is research that might transform healthcare and reduce health problems not being successfully produced?”2 Indeed, widely disseminated,3 ,4 albeit challenged5 ,6 estimates suggest that most published research findings are false or exaggerated and that 85% of biomedical research resources are wasted.7 Waste is conceptualised in this context as inefficiencies in all aspects of research, including setting priorities, design and conduct of research, regulation and management of research, and failure to publish results.2 We know our successes in identifying strong causes,8 that is, risk factors which causally contribute to disease in a large proportion of cases: the examples of asbestos-related, smoking-related and drinking water-related diseases illustrate the enormous rewards of successful occupational, environmental and public health research. However, in the recent past, potential risk factors of relatively small effects which may have major impacts on public health proved much more difficult to study. One current challenge in this regard is ‘The Plastics Puzzle’9: what research do we need to falsify the hypothesis that ubiquitous synthetic monomers, such as bisphenol A (BPA), and additives to plastics with expected half-lives of centuries, accumulate in wildlife and humans to possibly become a critical burden?10–14 This journal has continuously addressed facets of how we learn from,15 conduct16 and make …

Environmental threats to children's health are complex and multifaceted; consequently, children's environmental health research strives to identify areas of elevated exposure, determine whether particular demographic groups are inequitably exposed, and link exposures to incidence of disease. Many environmental health researchers use geographic information systems (GIS) to ex post display the results of their data collection and analysis. This methodological paper shows some ways by which the ex ante integration of GIS into environmental exposure and epidemiological research can significantly enhance: research design; sampling, recruitment, and retention strategies; data management and analysis; and community translation.