Center for Environmental Health in Northern Manhattan

Our world is changing rapidly. Societal and technological changes require an ever-evolving vision for solving emerging and persisting environmental health challenges, from polluted air and water to microplastics and new types of chemicals. New York City communities confront a substantial burden of these environmental harms. Therefore, our theme, “Re-envisioning environmental health in communities in a changing world,” captures the vision for the next funding period of the Center for Environmental Health in Northern Manhattan (CEHNM). The Center’s work will be articulated across three directions that reflect our strengths and interests, which we will advance through corresponding working groups: (1) Advancing the Exposome; (2) Environmental Data Science; and (3) Biological and Molecular Mechanisms. The mission of the CEHNM is to understand health concerns caused by environmental exposures and reduce harmful environmental exposures through translational science and partnerships. CEHNM is housed in the lower-income neighborhood of Washington Heights, surrounded by communities in Harlem and the South Bronx located near major roadways and transit hubs to enter and exit Manhattan, which are burdened by harmful environmental conditions. Our Community Engagement Core builds on longstanding and impactful collaboration with community members and proposes new methods of identifying and collaborating with community groups and supporting research to examine and ameliorate environmental health burden. We house a Career Development Program that has successfully supported scientists at Columbia University. Our Integrated Health Sciences Facility Core will integrate the expertise of six laboratories in sampling, processing, and state-of-the-art analysis of environmental and biological matrices. Our Study Design and Data Science Facility Core facilitates the use of contemporary study designs and a wide array of data management, biostatistics, and data science approaches. CEHNM’s Pilot Project Program has a 6-week turnaround from submission to funding for full applications (≤35K) and one-week turnaround for mini-pilots (≤10K). Pilots have stimulated innovative directions— ranging from new laboratory methods to data science and community partnerships—and has yielded 40- fold returns in external funding; in the current cycle, 87% of the pilot funding was awarded to Principal Investigators who were early-career faculty or non-members at the time of the award. Building on CEHNM’s record of success, we propose through this application a renewed organizational structure, enhanced services, and strategic future directions to continue to respond to the most urgent local and global public health challenges of our times.