UC Davis Environmental Health Sciences Core Center

University Of California At Davis, Davis CA

Investigators

Linked publications, trials & patents

Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY – Overall The mission of the UC Davis Environmental Health Sciences Center (EHSC) is to advance understanding of environmentally induced disease and disability and to translate this knowledge into interventions, new practices or policy changes that reduce those exposures or mitigate their effects on health. The EHSC has been a catalyst for cutting edge environmental health sciences research, with faculty from six schools and colleges engaged in research spanning molecular biosciences, toxicology, environmental science, engineering, pathophysiology, biostatistics, epidemiology, and community development. The Center has a Pilot Projects Program and four cores: Administrative, Translational Research Services, Exposure, and Community Engagement that are highly coordinated, as well as various advisory committees. In the last five years, the EHSC made huge strides, despite the pandemic having dominated more than half of this period. Among its notable achievements, the EHSC organized a COVID-19 mobile testing program in predominantly Latinx communities that overcame structural barriers and identified/counseled over 2300 positive cases in 18 months; attracted 28 new members, both Early Stage Investigators (ESIs) and established researchers new to EHS, including a bolus of clinician-researchers; increased publications from the previous cycle by 75%, initiated research on environmental cancer and grew our program on climate change. Increasingly, EHSC members are engaging with community stakeholders and seeking to address community-driven questions, with five research projects having strong community engagement this cycle. Guided by the NIEHS 2018-2023 Strategic Plan, the draft 2024-2029 Strategic Plan and the NIEHS Translational Research Framework, we adopted 3 overarching theme areas: 1) Translational Research from molecules to policy, 2) Population Vulnerability and Resilience, and 3) Building Bridges through relationships. These themes permeate our work. We expanded our Working Groups from three: air pollution and health, wildfires and health, and children’s environmental health with two additional ones: environmental justice, and exposomics/metabolomics, as this model promotes interdisciplinary teams on specific topics. Unique aspects of our EHSC are the maturing program on wildfires and health, for which ten pilot projects were awarded, and the development of novel devices for capturing exposures with non- invasive and wearable sensor platforms or collection instruments, that will be moved to the field in larger and more diverse population studies. In the next funding period, our EHSC will expand its scope and impact by 1) advancing cutting-edge research in exposure characterization, environmental health effects, their molecular biologic mechanisms, and technology development for improving measurement of exposures and biomarkers; 2) enlarging cadre of EHS researchers, 3) engaging with policy-makers, community stakeholders and health professionals, to ensure relevance of our research and translate findings into public health improvement.