Grantee Research Project Results
2013 Progress Report: Environmental Context of Health Disparities
EPA Grant Number: NIMHD007Title: Environmental Context of Health Disparities
Investigators: Juarez, Paul D , Langston, Michael A , Hood, Darryl B , Wilson, Sacoby M. , Wansoo, Im , Lichtveld, Maureen , Estes, Maurice , Al-Hamdan, Mohammad , Matthews-Juarez, Patricia , Robinson, Paul , Levine, Robert , Crosson, William
Institution: Meharry Medical College , Charles Drew University of Medicine & Science , Tulane University , National Space Science and Technology Center , University of Maryland - Baltimore , University of Tennessee
Current Institution: Meharry Medical College , Charles Drew University of Medicine & Science , National Space Science and Technology Center , Tulane University , University of Maryland - Baltimore , University of Tennessee
EPA Project Officer: Hahn, Intaek
Project Period: August 1, 2011 through July 31, 2014
Project Period Covered by this Report: September 21, 2012 through September 20,2013
Project Amount: $682,101
RFA: Transdisciplinary Networks of Excellence on the Environment and Health Disparities (2012) RFA Text | Recipients Lists
Research Category: Environmental Justice , Human Health
Objective:
The overall purpose of the environmental core supplement is to develop and support research activities that will enable us to study the environmental context of health disparities, improve access to healthy environments by disproportionately impacted communities, and improve health outcomes and eliminate health disparities among communities at greatest risk. This research endeavor builds upon current innovations of the Health Disparities Research Center of Excellence (HDRCOE) at Meharry Medical College by establishing an Environmental Health Disparities Core (EHDC) and expanding the capacity of health services researchers and other biomedical scientists to use a trans-disciplinary systems approach to study the environmental context of health disparities. To achieve this goal, this supplement helped expand our current research program to:
(1) incorporate data on the physical, social and environmental policies that will supplement currently funded health disparities research;
(2) use High Throughput Analyses (HTA) to analyze relationships between health disparities and environmental factors; and
(3) provide training in public participatory geographic information systems (PPGIS) and interactive mapping that supports community participation in the research process and in the translation, implementation and evaluation of targeted public health interventions.
Progress Summary:
Weekly tele-conferences continue to be conducted each Friday morning from 10:00 -11:00 am CST by a trans-disciplinary team of about 20 investigators from multiple institutions. Agendas are sent out to all Environmental Core investigators and to any other person who expresses an interest in participating. The purpose of these meetings is to review progress and provide opportunities for investigators to discuss their needs and suggestions on futures direction.
An investigator two-day meeting was conducted in Knoxville, TN, April 24-25, 2013. The purpose of the meeting was to bring together investigators to meet, become familiar with the expertise and resources available to each investigator, and to develop a plan for building out the public health exposome database. At this meeting investigators identified their research interests, the types of data that were available in the public health exposome database, and research opportunities. After the second meeting, Dr. Im has led continuous efforts to acquire many different physical, built, social, and policy-related GIS databases and oversaw processing and geocoding of data within ArcView GIS. The server was established to optimize data visualization using mapping techniques.
A webinar was held on Tuesday, November 12, 2013 in partnership with U.S. EPA Sustainable and Healthy Communities Research Program (SHCRP). The webinar was led by Dr. Paul D. Juarez, Founding Director, Research Center on Health Disparities, Equity, and the Exposome, University of Tennessee Health Science Center and was entitled Public Health Exposome, Identifying Health Disparities Pathways from Environmental Exposures to Molecular Biomarkers. During the presentation, investigators from the Health Disparities Research Center of Excellence at Meharry Medical College and the Research Center on Health Disparities, Equity & the Exposome presented an overview of the Public Health Exposome (PHE) and PHE database, described combinatorial analytics and how its being applied to health disparities, Identified how PPGIS and interactive mapping are used to engage community partners, and discussed the implications for Environmental Public Health and Exposure Science.
The environmental core supplement has helped build a data infrastructure at the interface between environmental exposures and bio-psycho-social systems. A public health exposome model was developed to guide research efforts for conceptualizing environmental pathways that affect health disparities and for developing a longitudinal database. The public health exposome database was structured in a manner that allows for both continued expansion and refinement of data, including new data sets, additional states, years, and incorporation of greater amounts of sub-county level data through both secondary and primary data collection methods, including public participatory GIS and crowdsourcing. Most of the environmental and health care data sets were obtained from publicly available sites at no or low cost; most are downloadable directly from the web.
Future Activities:
We plan to continue to extend the public health exposome paradigm across all of the Center Core activities. No major changes are expected in Center goals or objectives.
Journal Articles on this Report : 11 Displayed | Download in RIS Format
| Other project views: | All 47 publications | 16 publications in selected types | All 15 journal articles |
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Chen C-K, Bruce M, Tyler L, Brown C, Garrett A, Goggins S, Lewis-Polite B, Weriwoh ML, Juarez PD, Hood DB, Skelton T. Analysis of an environmental exposure health questionnaire in a metropolitan minority population utilizing logistic regression and Support Vector Machines. Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved 2013;24(Suppl 1):153-171. |
NIMHD007 (2012) NIMHD007 (2013) NIMHD007 (Final) |
Exit Exit |
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Goldzweig IA, Schlundt DG, Moore WE, Smith PE, Zoorob RJ, Levine RS. An academic, business, and community alliance to promote evidence-based public health policy: the case of primary seat belt legislation. Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved 2013;24(3):1364-1377. |
NIMHD007 (2013) NIMHD007 (Final) |
Exit Exit |
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Hennekens CH, Drowos J, Levine RS. Mortality from homicide among young Black men: a new American tragedy. The American Journal of Medicine 2013;126(4):282-283. |
NIMHD007 (2013) NIMHD007 (Final) |
Exit Exit Exit |
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Juarez P, Hood DB. Sequencing the public health genome. Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved 2013;24(Suppl 1):114-120. |
NIMHD007 (2012) NIMHD007 (2013) NIMHD007 (Final) |
Exit |
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Levine RS, Rust G, Aliyu M, Pisu M, Zoorob R, Goldzweig I, Juarez P, Husaini B, Hennekens CH. United States counties with low black male mortality rates. The American Journal of Medicine 2013;126(1):76-80. |
NIMHD007 (2012) NIMHD007 (2013) NIMHD007 (Final) |
Exit Exit Exit |
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Matthews-Juarez P. Developing a cadre of transdisciplinary health disparities researchers for the 21st century. Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved 2013;24(Suppl 1):121-128. |
NIMHD007 (2012) NIMHD007 (2013) NIMHD007 (Final) |
Exit |
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Matthews-Juarez P, Juarez PD, Faulkner RT. Social media and military families: a perspective. Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment 2013;23(6):769-776. |
NIMHD007 (2013) NIMHD007 (Final) |
Exit Exit |
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Mejia de Grubb MC, Kilbourne B, Kihlberg C, Levine RS, Hood DB. Demographic and geographic variations in breast cancer mortality among U.S. Hispanics. Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved 2013;24(Suppl 1):140-152. |
NIMHD007 (2012) NIMHD007 (2013) NIMHD007 (Final) |
Exit Exit |
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Rehr R, Wilson S, Hood DB. The Maryland Commission on Environmental Justice and Sustainable Communities: a review. Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved 2013;24(Suppl 1):129-139. |
NIMHD007 (2012) NIMHD007 (2013) NIMHD007 (Final) |
Exit Exit |
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Robinson PL, Dominguez F, Teklehaimanot S, Lee M, Brown A, Goodchild M, Hood DB. Does distance decay modelling of supermarket accessibility predict fruit and vegetable intake by individuals in a large metropolitan area? Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved 2013;24(Suppl 1):172-185. |
NIMHD007 (2012) NIMHD007 (2013) NIMHD007 (Final) |
Exit Exit |
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Sampson UKA, Husaini BA, Cain VA, Samad Z, Jahangir EC, Levine RS. Short-term trends in heart failure-related hospitalizations in a high-risk state. Southern Medical Journal 2013;106(2):147-154. |
NIMHD007 (2013) NIMHD007 (Final) |
Exit |
Supplemental Keywords:
Exposome, Public Health Exposome, and GIS Participatory Base ResearchRelevant Websites:
Below are the Web sites that has been established as part of the project or that reflects related research and publications associated with the principal investigators.
Progress and Final Reports:
Original AbstractThe perspectives, information and conclusions conveyed in research project abstracts, progress reports, final reports, journal abstracts and journal publications convey the viewpoints of the principal investigator and may not represent the views and policies of ORD and EPA. Conclusions drawn by the principal investigators have not been reviewed by the Agency.