Welcome to the Center for Children’s Environmental Health and Disease Prevention at the Harvard School of Public Health!!!

(This website is a work-in-progress; please pardon us if some information remains incomplete or if specific links are not yet functional!)

In June of 2004, we established a new Center for Children’s Environmental Health and Disease Prevention Research with support from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences. Our Center addresses the concerns of a community living in the Tar Creek Superfund site of Oklahoma — an area highly contaminated by metals (lead, cadmium, iron, manganese, and others) in mining waste and populated by many residents of Native American descent. Our overall goal is to take a highly innovative approach to addressing a "real world" problem, i.e., the potential of the mixtures of metals that are present in "chat" (mining waste) to interact with each other in terms of exposure, absorption, dose, and adverse effects on the development of children. To do so, our Center is pursuing four well-integrated Research Projects, two of which involve community-based field research with partners at the Tar Car Creek Superfund site, with the support of four Cores.

We welcome you to browse our website. For more information or to provide feedback, please feel free to contact:

Ann Backus, M.S.
Children’s Center Outreach at Harvard
Tele: (617) 432-4327
Email: abackus@hohp.harvard.edu

or

Rebecca Jim, M.S.
Children’s Center Outreach at Tar Creek
Director of the Community Outreach and Translation Core
Tele: (918) 256-5269
Email: rjim@neok.com

or

Joseph Brain, Sc.D.
Director and Principal Investigator
Tele: (617) 432-1272
Email: brain@hsph.harvard.edu