Integrative Health Sciences Facility Core

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INTEGRATIVE HEALTH SCIENCES FACILITY CORE (IHSFC): ABSTRACT The IHSFC is the entity that enables CEET investigators to perform translational environmental health research that impacts individuals and communities. Its mission includes (1) support of the translation of basic science observations that relate environmental exposures to adverse outcomes into human studies that detect, prevent and/or manage diseases induced or exacerbated by these exposures and (2) to translate EHS questions derived from the community into testable hypotheses that can be addressed with human studies. Services provided by the IHSFC to CEET investigators include: (a) Human Studies Design and Performance Services, (b) Population Exposure Services, (c) Pre-clinical and Human Exposure Laboratories, (d) the CEET Virtual Biorepository and (e) Biostatistics Services. The Population Exposure Services now has expertise in GIS technology, ArcGIS tools, cartographic mapping, geospatial analysis to measure the external exposome. Population science-based projects that require biomarker support in the study design are referred to the Translational Biomarker Core, and those that generate “big-data” in their study design are referred to the Exposure Biology Informatics Core. The IHSFC acts as a bridge to the Community Engagement Core (CEC) and communicates in a bi-directional manner to formulate community-based questions and concerns into specific hypotheses for CEET investigators to address by research and communicate results of the studies back to community members. Studies supported by the IHSFC include those involving the integrated thematic areas of Air Pollution & Lung Health, Environmental Exposures & Cancer, Windows-of-Susceptibility and Environmental Neuroscience, as well as novel studies initiated via pilot projects. Over the past four years, the IHSFC has supported 51 separate studies involving 28 different CEET investigators that have generated 46 publications. Efforts by the IHSFC will ultimately result in achieving Precision Public Health (PPH) - the prediction of who is at risk of exposure, who is at risk for disease, and the identification of predictive and prognostic biomarkers.