Integrated Health Sciences Facility Core

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IHSFC PROJECT SUMMARY Within the state of New Mexico, the health impacts (both individual and communal) from mining, metal exposure as well as oil/gas/fracking activities are of considerable community concern. There is a broad range of experience and extensive depth of knowledge that exists among the researchers and research teams throughout the NM-INSPIRES Center investigators that can be directed toward addressing these community environmental health concerns. The overall goal of the IHSFC is to work in partnership with all the Center’s Cores and provide key infrastructure and support to actualize innovative translational and reverse translational environmental health research that serves the communities of New Mexico. Environmental health research currently conducted by NM-INSPIRES investigators generates data on a large number of variables including environmental exposures, intermediate biological responses, and complex health outcomes. The findings from this broad array of ongoing environmental, human and animal studies provides a rich source of data to inform and inspire new translational or reverse-translational studies addressing complex exposure-outcome relationships. The IHSFC will support the expansion and implementation of new translational and reverse-translational research and capitalizes on the broad experience that exists within the Center. The IHSFC team includes expertise in epidemiology, public health and toxicology to provide guidance for study design to effectively address population risk factors and susceptibilities as well as potential mechanisms that drive health outcomes. Specifically, the IHSFC will provide exceptional and complementary scientific, technical and operational support to facilitate both new collaborations and initiatives through 1) providing support for study design and implementation of population, clinical and laboratory based studies, 2) overcoming institutional or regulatory bottlenecks, 3) facilitating access to existing data and samples from ongoing environmental research to support or validate new initiatives. The specific experience within the IHSFC team in implementing translational research studies will provide an infrastructure that does not currently exist across the Center. The IHSFC will work to capitalize on the unique research background and experience within the NM INSPIRES Center to expand our reach more broadly across New Mexico and build on the strength of existing expertise, available resources to develop the infrastructure and create a value- added synergistic service that will achieve Center objectives. The services and support provided by the IHSFC provides a mechanism to continue to expand our excellent basic and translational research programs in environmental health to serve our diverse community.