International Training in Environmental Health over the Lifespan

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Project Summary Global environmental health is recognized as the most pressing challenge of our time. A recent report by The Lancet estimated that environmental pollution causes three times more deaths from non-communicable diseases (NCD) than AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria combined and that 92% of pollution-related deaths and diseases occur in low and middle income countries (LMICs). The mission of the Mount Sinai Division of International Health is to collaborate with LMICs to identify, document, prevent and mitigate environmental health problems especially in vulnerable populations such as children and underserved communities. Because of the close, long-term collaborations established through previous NIH-funded programs, we are poised to collaborate with new partners in Latin America. Based on those experiences, we propose to employ a proven, multi-tiered research training strategy that builds on local strengths at the individual, institutional, and regional levels with public university partners in Costa Rica, a country of many environmental strengths and challenges. The Mount Sinai-Universidad Nacional de Costa Rica (UNA) partnership is centered on equality and builds on each partner’s strengths. Our aims are: 1)To create a Mentored Research Scholarship Program in which junior scientists will be paired with mentors in the US for training in research methods and to conduct long-term research projects in Costa Rica. 2) To enhance teaching in Environmental and Occupational Health by collaborating in the creation of short-term courses that enhance research capacity for a broad range of biomedical and health professionals. 3) To promote South-to-South-to-North Collaboration by supporting a program of Advanced Research Scholarships to Costa Rican scientists that have a high potential to be self- sustaining. This multi-level approach to capacity building at the individual, institutional, and regional levels will ensure that the proposed program has both depth and breadth. The guiding principle of this program plan is to recognize the strengths of each partner and build on these through mutual collaboration. The program will, therefore, increase the likelihood of continued long-term impact. In line with our mission, the centerpiece will be a mentoring program uniquely designed to avoid the “brain-drain” of researchers from the partner country and instead builds capacity within Latin America. We expect that the program will result in 30 highly-skilled professionals in environmental health sciences conducting research at local public universities. Their projects will include multinational collaborations and the enhancement of environmental health resources for researchers in Costa Rica. We estimate based on our previous research training programs that the mentored and advanced research projects will generate at least 60 research publications. There will also be an estimated 250 participants in courses who will be able to incorporate environmental and occupational health research into their own projects. Importantly, there will also be many local communities and workers who will benefit from interventions to reduce NCDs caused or aggravated by environmental exposures.