Translational Research Support Core

ABSTRACT – TRANSLATIONAL RESEARCH SUPPORT CORE Established in 2020, the UCSF Environmental Research and Translation for Health (EaRTH) Center seeks to address the growing burden of disease and health inequities due to environmental exposures. The Translational Research Support Core (TRSC, previously the Integrated Health Sciences Facility Core), plays a pivotal role in advancing environmental health research and fostering innovation through a comprehensive range of services on all aspects of the research continuum essential for successful research in environmental health. TRSC services include consultations on effective study design and implementation including, regulatory approvals, curated environmental exposure surveys, tools for data management, biostatistical advice and analysis implementation, analytics, chemical selection, measurement, and model systems, and support for effective communication strategies to widely broadcast the users science. Successes in our first four years include over 140 consultations with users from varied backgrounds and disciplines, including 79 UCSF clinicians and scholars across 22 UCSF departments/divisions and 16 external organizations. Almost a third of our consultations were with early-stage investigators and about half for those new to environmental health. This resulted in 27 successful EaRTH-funded awards utilizing TRSC services, and contributions to many of the EaRTH Center’s 101 published papers and 194 grant applications. The TRSC, individually and in collaboration with other Cores, supported several high-impact projects including studies to address unprecedented wildfire smoke exposures in California, known as the new SPARK Program, and a collaborative effort with UCSF’s Comprehensive Cancer Center, identifying new insights into chemical body burden and cancer risk. This work collectively has informed several areas of innovation for our renewal in response to user needs and the evolving environmental health research landscape, including: offering expertise on wildfire exposures; incorporating environmental data into UCSF geographic information system resources; building out the Center’s library of exposure surveys and biobank for access by members and the UCSF community; and expanding our translation services to meet user needs for communications strategies for sharing their science with multiple stakeholders, including patients, community groups, and policymakers.