Reaching out to New York neighborhoods.

As a means of accomplishing its mission of studying how environmental agents affect human health, the NIEHS sponsors a program of center core grants designed to support centralized resources and facilities shared by investigators with existing research grants. The purpose of these center grants is to promote a multidisciplinary approach to environmental health sciences, bringing together scientists from a variety of fields to address environmental health problems from different perspectives and thus enhance the research endeavor. These centers are categorized into environmental health sciences centers, marine and freshwater biomedical sciences centers, and developmental centers. Each center supports a community outreach and education program (COEP) to serve as a conduit between center investigators and community members. Liam O'Fallon, the NIEHS coordinator for the center COEPs, says, " The goal of these programs is to convey information from each center's research findings to the surrounding community in a culturally relevant manner so as to improve understanding and awareness of environmental health concepts and issues. " The COEPs help to translate research results in the environmental health sciences into practical applications to improve public health by facilitating communication between university researchers and communities. Communication between community leaders and academic scientists is the key to addressing the two main objectives of the COEPs: to increase community participation in the research process, and to increase outreach and educational activities that enhance the community's understanding of environmental health sciences. This objective comes to life at New York's Center for Environmental Health in Northern Manhattan at the Joseph L. Mailman School of Public Health (a part of Columbia University). Center director Joseph H. Graziano describes the general philosophy of the center: " Some portion of the research portfolio of the center must be directly responsive to the concerns of the community—that research must involve the community from inception to completion. At the same time, effective disease prevention can only occur when research results are effectively communicated to the communities who are at risk. " This philosophy is the overriding principle that guides the COEP activities at the Columbia center. The COEP itself is directed by Mary Northridge, an assistant professor in the Division of Epidemiology and Environmental Health Sciences at the Mailman School of Public Health. In her view, COEP activities are the basis for conducting research that is both scientifically valid and socially relevant. Furthermore, she says that " science is fundamentally strengthened by the integration …