UNC Center for Environmental Health and Susceptibility

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ABSTRACT The theme of the UNC Center for Environmental Health and Susceptibility (CEHS) is translating interdisciplinary research on environmental health susceptibility to improve public health in North Carolina. The Center encourages and facilitates collaborations among basic researchers, public health scientists, and clinicians to generate high impact discoveries that improve public health. Three translational research focus areas are supported: environmental cancer, cardiopulmonary disease, and developmental disease. Health disparities and prevalent North Carolina exposures are cross-cutting themes. The strategic vision is implemented by the Administrative Core, which oversees facility cores, evaluates and funds innovative pilot projects, sponsors seminars and symposia, supports developing careers, communicates with Center membership, prepares budgets, reports and newsletters, and tracks publications and grant proposals. The Center has two facility cores that facilitate human studies and provide scientific support. The Integrated Health Sciences Facility Core (IHSFC) encourages new clinical and population-based studies and connects members to a wealth of existing studies and data. The IHSFC also provides expertise in human studies, including professional staffing support for participant engagement and biospecimen processing. The Molecular Analysis and Statistical Support (MASS) facility core provides full service scientific support, from study design to data acquisition to analytics. Through walk-in clinics, individual consultation, training and methods development funding, the MASS core provides expertise and instrumentation for mass spectrometry, translational histopathology, and cutting edge genomics, while also providing computational and statistical support with study design, data analysis, training and methods development. An integrated scientific support model ensures excellence in exposure science, imaging, and omics studies, strengths of our Center. The Community Engagement Core (CEC) connects CEHS researchers with community partners, facilitating multidirectional communication and ensuring broad relevance to the State, both of which are critical to the translational goals of CEHS. Both scientific and engagement projects are supported by a competitive Pilot Projects program that prioritizes junior faculty. CEHS actively mentors and cultivates leadership of junior and mid-level career investigators to train the next generation of environmental health researchers. Through our Stakeholder Advisory Board and External Advisory Board the UNC-CEHS receives input on environmental exposures of concern in North Carolina communities and feedback on Center effectiveness. With goals aligned to the NIEHS strategic plan, CEHS serves the public health of North Carolina and the nation with strategic scientific activities and community engagement.