Core Focus
The core supports the mentorship of early career trainees including multiple doctoral students and early career faculty who have been awarded NIEHS F31 fellowships K awards. Population Exposures and Outcomes Research Core meetings provide opportunities for these rising stars to receive early stage, constructive feedback on their research. The Population Exposures and Outcomes Research Core works closely with the Pathogenesis of Environmental Disease Research Core in order to translate their findings from humans to causal mechanisms in model systems.
Community-Engaged Research
Many projects in this core directly address priorities in our local communities, with some projects co-designed or co-led by community partners. Recent research in the core has addressed community concerns around forever chemicals, lead, and air pollution across NJ, prioritizing “research that matters” to the communities CEED serves.
Special Populations
Recognizing that environmental exposures are not distributed evenly populations and may affect people differently, research in this core often focuses on special populations that may be particularly vulnerable because of their life stage (e.g., pregnant women, children, the elderly) or occupation (e.g., firefighters, military personnel, landscapers).
Characterizing Individual and Population Exposures
Working closely with the Chemical Analysis
and Detection core, Population Exposures and Outcomes Research Core members characterize exposures to chemical contaminants (e.g. metals, plasticizers, flame retardants, forever chemicals) in human biospecimens from prospective cohort studies. Core members additionally leverage big data from electronic medical records, claims data, geospatial resources and more to model individual- and population-level exposures using machine learning and other cutting edge approaches.
