Integrated Health Sciences Facility Core

Core Director: Howard Kipen, MD, MPH
Core Co-Director: Judith Graber, PhD
Members: Kathy Black, PhD, MPH, Debra Laskin, PhD, Pamela A. Ohman-Strickland, Ph.D.

Diesel trucks idle by a school in Newark’s Ironbound section

The mission of CEED is to improve human health by performing translational research using emerging science, engineering, and technology to determine how the environment, genome and epigenome interact to modulate the risk of adverse health outcomes. The Integrative Health Sciences Facility Core (IHSFC) plays a central role in achieving the research mission of the CEED. The IHSFC is the nexus for the Center’s interdisciplinary and translational research mission. Its goal is to advance the integration of basic, translational, clinical, and epidemiological research. The IHSFC facilitates dialog among CEED members from different disciplines and provides guidance and training in design and implementation of studies in population (observational) and clinical epidemiology providing expertise in a wide range of methodologies including controlled exposure, survey research, controlled trials, and clinical panel studies. IHSFC faculty and staff provide technical assistance with study design, subject recruitment, screening, management, and retention, questionnaire design, IRB application, clinical procedures, and collection and processing of human samples for cellular, pathological and molecular analyses. As such the IHSFC plays a key role in training and faculty development. The IHSFC maintains the Center’s Sample Management System (SMS), which integrates biological sample management and analysis by Facility Cores. The IHSFC is also the portal for biostatistics, data management, archiving and security, and facilitates bidirectional translation of clinical and animal studies. Furthermore, IHSFC activities, particularly recruitment, dovetail to mutual advantage, and with overlapping faculty and staff (K. Black, H. Kipen, R. Laumbach, J. Graber) in our Community Engagement Core (CEC).

The IHSFC leadership has expertise in clinical research and environmental/occupational epidemiology:

• H. Kipen, MD, MPH is board-certified in internal and occupational medicine and has over 25 years of experience organizing clinical field and controlled exposure studies with a focus on health effects studies of indoor and outdoor air pollution. He is the founding director of the IHSFC.
• J. Graber, PhD is an environmental / occupational epidemiologist with strong methodologic skills whose research focuses on the intersection of occupational dust exposures and behavioral risk factors –such as tobacco and alcohol use—and cancer outcomes. She is a new member of the CEED.
• D. Laskin, PhD is a toxicologist with broad experience in in vitro and in vivo experimental models and also director of the flow Cytometry Core facility.
• K. Black, PhD is a senior research associate and coordinator of IHSFC services with over 15 years of experience in clinical and field studies and particular expertise in IRB issues. Additional staff include S. Alimokhtari, research associate, and 3 bilingual clinical research technicians. Three faculty physicians (plus occupational/ environmental medicine residents) and 7 nurse FTE are available to support CEED clinical research studies through the Clinical Center of EOHSI.
• Pamela A. Ohman-Strickland, Ph.D.is an experienced biostatistician with particular expertise in analysis of controlled exposure and field studies of environmental pollutants