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Joining Novelty with Equity as a Call to Action: Recommendations for Developing Environmental Aging Biomarkers in the Context of Racial Disparities in Environmental Health and Aging
Citation:
Nwanji-Enwerem, J., C. Jackson, M. Ottinger, A. Geller, A. Cardenas, K. James, K. Malecki, J. Chen, G. Harry, AND U. Mitchell. Joining Novelty with Equity as a Call to Action: Recommendations for Developing Environmental Aging Biomarkers in the Context of Racial Disparities in Environmental Health and Aging. ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH PERSPECTIVES. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), Research Triangle Park, NC, 129(4):18, (2021). https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP8392
Impact/Purpose:
Commentary providing collective recommendations for addressing racial disparities in aging and environmental health from the viewpoint of research on the development of environmental aging biomarkers, that is, aging biomarkers known to be specifically influenced by environmental exposures following the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) virtual workshop focused on integrating the science of aging and environmental health research.
Description:
Background: In June, 2020, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) hosted a virtual workshop focusing on integrating the science of aging and environmental health research. The concurrent global COVID-19 pandemic and national attention towards racism prominently surfaced the critical need to understand the role of equity and racial disparities in aging and environmental processes. By the end of the workshop, it became clear that both the novelty and utility of environmental aging biomarkers — aging biomarkers known to be specifically influenced by environmental exposures — would be greatly diminished if proportionate attention was not placed on equity. It became a priority to develop recommendations intended to ensure that the biomarkers of the future do not further perpetuate existing or create new racial disparities of environment-related disease. Through extensive post-workshop reflection and dialogue, the authors reached the consensus that environmental aging biomarkers must be validated in the context of existing racial disparities in environmental health and aging. Objectives: We provide a brief overview of existing racial disparities in environment-related diseases and aging in the United States. We then present recommendations for environmental aging biomarker development that may prove useful for mitigating existing and future racial disparities in environmental health and aging research. Discussion: Given the immense evidence that the burden of toxic environmental exposures are not borne equally across racial populations in the United States, biomarkers built to measure relationships of environmental exposures with human aging require considerations of racial equity. Employing broader exposure categorization frameworks, increasing the diversity of study populations, and improving the handling of race in the publication process for biomarker studies will result in the identification of biomarkers of aging that explicate racial disparities in health and best position the environmental research community toward playing a role in reducing existing and future racial disparities.
URLs/Downloads:
DOI: Joining Novelty with Equity as a Call to Action: Recommendations for Developing Environmental Aging Biomarkers in the Context of Racial Disparities in Environmental Health and Aging
https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/10.1289/EHP8392