HSPH-NIEHS Center Retreat

Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, we will hold this year’s retreat as a virtual meeting on Wednesday, November 10, 2021.  Please save the date in your calendar!

We want to take this opportunity to start thinking about the direction of our next competing renewal.  As climate change is one of the most urgent environmental issues facing the planet today, this seems like a natural and important area on which to focus. In the name of driving the environmental health research discussion—as opposed to merely being responsive to it—we think a more comprehensive and engaging umbrella of “planetary health” could be a resonant theme.  In addition, we’d like to keep environmental justice, diversity, equity, and belonging in their deserving place at the forefront of the conversation.  These are important issues in their own right, but they are also critical components of planetary health and climate issues.

Our goal for this retreat is to interrogate what these issues mean to the different types of work we’re doing, while fostering an inclusive Center with a vision that aligns with these issues. To this end, we want to spend the morning in more domain-specific groups to discuss these issues and then, following the seminar by NIEHS Director Rick Woychik, reconvene as a group via webinar to hear report-backs from the morning sessions.

Please join us to advance the discussion of the direction of our Center!

DRAFT AGENDA

11:15 -11:30am   Welcome

11:30am – 12.30pm         Break out rooms:

1. Lab Sciences
2. Environmental Epi/Stats
3. Exposure Assessment
4. Community Engagement/Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging

12:30-1:00pm  Lunch

1:00-2:00pm     Richard (Rick) P. Woychik, Ph.D.

Director, NIH’s National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS)

2:15 – 3:30pm     Morning research domains feed-back, discussing/fielding questions from members