Mount Sinai Center for Health and Environment Across the LifeSpan (HEALS)

Icahn School Of Medicine At Mount Sinai, New York NY

Investigators

Linked publications, trials & patents

Abstract

In just 8 years of existence, our Health Effects Across the LifeSPan (HEALS) P30 Core Center has accelerated remarkable environmental health research growth. Using a life stage approach and the underlying philosophy that environment is important for all diseases, we have formed new transdisciplinary teams, partnered with other Mount Sinai P30 Centers in Aging, Cancer and Skin Biology, as well as our CTSA to bring environment into more and more research programs at Mount Sinai. We have prioritized life course research among Center Members, recruits and trainees to link together scientists with cross-disciplinary backgrounds to address complex research questions. We expanded our base of NIEHS funding, going from a ranking of 27th to 2nd - more than tripling our funding. Our Pilot Projects have fueled much of this growth and accelerated career development. Through our community partnerships, we translate our research findings into evidence-based approaches for disease prevention and treatment with strong links to patients and physicians. Our Center supports three Facility Cores: an Integrated Health Sciences Facility Core that supports biomarker research and access to clinical populations/biospecimens, a Biostatistics and Bioinformatics Facility Core that supports analysis of environmental data and creates new data analytical methods for exposomic research; and a clinically-oriented Phenotyping and Environmental Modifiers Facility Core that supports state of the art health measures as well as measures of the environmental modifiers (stress, nutrition etc). Our Community Engagement Core is committed to effective health communication and partners with local communities around Mount Sinai serves. Going forward, our P30 Center will continue to build capacity, new research programs and expand even further. Given our outstanding institutional support through our Institute for Exposomics Research (see Dean’s letter) and our ties to our CTSA, we plan to move EH into all research programs at Mount Sinai and anticipate the need for additional infrastructure and additional staffing resources to increase capacity of our facility cores and stay abreast of the many scientific breakthroughs that will undoubtedly occur in Exposure Science and Environmental Health. This P30 Center created and supports the infrastructure that our research teams depend upon. Finally, our program is clearly in line with NIEHS strategic goals. Our Research groups (mixtures, exposomics and clinical environmental research) are designed to address the NIEHS strategic plan which emphasizes the study of multiple exposures working via multiple mechanisms and moves EH to embrace precision medicine initiatives at NIH. Our Center emphasizes shared biological pathways of exposures, individual susceptibility, exposomics, and environmental causes of chronic diseases, all of which are inherent to NIEHS’s mission. In closing, our P30 Center has been remarkably successful, continues to grow, and in this renewal will meet the emerging needs of our environmental research community.