Harvard NIEHS Center for Environmental Health
The Harvard NIEHS Center for Environmental Health serves as the focus for environmental health research and training activities in the Harvard School of Public Health and elsewhere at Harvard University. The Center was established in 1958 to promote interactions among physicians, biological scientists, physical scientists, and engineers working on environmental problems that influence human health. It is the oldest NIEHS Center.
The Center draws its faculty primarily from the Departments of Biostatistics, Genetics and Complex Diseases (including the Toxicology and Radiobiology programs), Environmental Health, Epidemiology, and Nutrition. It serves as an integrating umbrella to foster collaborative arrangements that cross departmental boundaries. Approximately 50 faculty members participate in Center activities.
The theme of the Center is the identification and prevention of physical and chemical hazards in the environment that influence biological systems, with particular emphasis on the health of humans. A wide range of diseases and effects are included, such as cancer, chronic lung disease, reproductive outcomes, and effects on the nervous and renal systems. Research ranges from studies of molecules and cells to those of whole animals and human populations. A major goal is to facilitate productive interactions between basic and applied environmental science. Another goal is to leverage Center grant support to facilitate educational and outreach activities in the community.
The Center has three Research Cores, three Facility Cores, and a Community Outreach and Education Program. Please see below for a brief description or click on a specific core foe more detailed information.
Research Cores
Our NIEHS Center has three Research Cores: Metals, Urban and Occupational Particles, and Organic Pollutants. They all represent major scientific themes/challenges that are particularly prominent in our Center. Each one is an opportunity to deploy the full range of our intellectual resources and an opportunity to link them together in a synergistic and interactive way.
Thus, each of the three Research Cores features toxicology, basic mechanisms, in vitro models, animal models, gene-environment interactions, epidemiology, risk analysis, risk communication and connects to COEP. Each includes exposure assessment as well as health outcomes in both animal models and human populations. Moreover, each represents an area of considerable activity and accomplishment as well as a compelling list of unsolved concerns.
Facility Cores
Our NIEHS Center includes three core facilities: Biological Analyses, Exposures & Environmental Analyses, and Environmental Statistics. The purpose of these cores is to provide access to critical technologies and expertise needed for modern environmental studies. The Biological Analyses and Exposures & Environmental Analyses Cores include an array of state-of-the-art equipment that would be impractical for individual laboratories to acquire and operate. Equally important, the key personnel for these facilities provide scientific (the faculty member) and technical (the research specialist) expertise which greatly benefit Center investigators in terms of experimental design, execution and interpretation. Similarly, the Environmental Statistics Core provides access to sophisticated computer hardware for analyses, but also invaluable access to human expertise in selecting, executing and interpreting statistical approaches to environmental studies.
Community Outreach and Education
The long-term objectives of the Harvard NIEHS Center's Community Outreach and Education Program (COEP) are to integrate and implement the outreach-related goals and mission of the Harvard NIEHS Center for Environmental Health with those of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.
Administration
The Center Director is Dr. Joseph D. Brain, who is responsible for the scientific, technical, and administrative direction of the Program.
Phone: (617) 432-1272
e-mail: brain@hsph.harvard.eduThe Center has two Associate Directors, Dr. Howard Hu and Dr. Louise Ryan:
Dr. Hu is responsible for the functioning of the Research Cores and especially for interactions among the three Research Cores. He is also the liaison for the Center's connections with the medical community and other aspects of environmental medicine, both in Boston and nationally.
Phone: (617) 432-2790 or (617) 384-8870
e-mail: rehhu@channing.harvard.eduDr. Ryan is in charge of the integration of the three Facility Cores and also provides direction to our COEP, especially in relation to community-based research.
Phone: (617) 432-4902
e-mail: lryan@hsph.harvard.eduThe Center's Administrator is Timothy Sloate, who assists the Center Director in the management of the Center.
Phone: (617) 432-3483
e-mail: tsloate@hsph.harvard.edu