Integrative Health Sciences

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A2. Purpose, Rationale and Objectives The purpose of the Integrated Health Sciences Facility Core (IHSFC) is to facilitate and enhance the speed at which translation of basic research discovery occurs into clinical or public health applications by members of the Johns Hopkins NIEHS Center in Urban Environmental Health. The rationale for incorporating and enhancing the functions of several of our existing facility cores into this new structure is built upon the recognition that addressing the problems of urban environmental health requires multidisciplinary approaches and ever increasing complex technologies. Our past facility core structure often had the unintended consequence of "stove piping" services. Since we are striving to facilitate the tackling of problems across disciplines, we have designed the IHSFC to streamline the ability of Center investigators to do translational research by creating a "one-stop" core that encompasses the services, instrumentation and seed-money necessary to promote linkages to public health. We feel that the IHSFC has taken what we have done well in the past in several facility cores and enhanced these services in a new format that will serve the Center during the next renewal cycle. The specific objectives of this core are: ¿ To provide services and access to instrumentation and technologies that foster integration of basic science into public health research, including epidemiology, prevention and intervention studies. ¿ To support research to improve exposure characterization, early detection of disease risk, biomarker discovery and development of preventive interventions for environmentally related diseases. ¿ To enhance partnerships between researchers and the community that impact on conduct of clinical and public health research through the linkage of the IHSFC with the Community Outreach and Education Core (COEC) in this Center. Translational research always encompasses population or clinical-based investigations that involve human subjects with the goal of reducing disease burden. Irrespective of whether these studies involve etiologic or active interventions, all of these investigations must undergo extensive human subjects review by the Public Health Institutional Review, Submission and Tracking (PHIRST) committee at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (http://phirst.jhsph.edu/). All faculty are required to take online training certification about the ethics of human subjects research (at www.citiprogram.org). Furthermore, investigators involved in clinical trials are strongly encouraged to avail themselves of the Center for Clinical Trials (http://cct.jhsph.edu) in the School to provide guidance for ethical research, and the development of data safety and monitoring boards. Thus, the extensive institutional commitment and infrastructure for human subject's research at this School obviates the need for the IHSFC to duplicate these activities.