Please contact Brianna Siracuse at siracuse@umich.edu for items you would like
included in our M-LEEaD Newsletter
Community Engagement Core & Integrated Health Sciences Core Webinar Series
Image is from the April 13th webinar, Confronting Environmental Racism & Promoting Environmental Justice.
The Integrated Health Sciences Core (IHSC) and the Community Engagement Core (CEC) partnered on a webinar series to bring community and academic partners together to address environmental justice issues. This series focused on environmental racism and environmental justice and issues that are being faced in southeast MI communities. The series was co-sponsored by the Environmental Health Sciences Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee and the Health Behavior and Health Education Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Collaborative. The series illustrated exciting opportunities and potential for bringing together academic partners like M-LEEaD members with community activists and advocates who are actively engaged in addressing environmental health issues that they are confronting in their communities.
This project aligns with the NIEHS goals for promoting translation:
Creating knowledge from data
Outreach communication and engagement
Evidence-based prevention and intervention
Emerging environmental health issues
Partnerships for action
Please click on the links below to view each webinar.
Dana Dolinoy's Role as NSF International Chair of Environmental Health Sciences Extended to 2024
The Board of Regents appointed Dana Dolinoy to a second three-year term as the NSF International Chair of Environmental Health Sciences at their monthly meeting on Thursday, March 25. Dolinoy, a professor of Environmental Health Sciences and Nutritional Sciences, was first appointed chair in December 2017. Dana's first chair term was very successful as she led the department through important changes and initiatives, and she continues to build strong relationships with students, faculty, and staff along with leaders from across the school, the university, and peer institutions. Her term is extended to 2024.
Congratulations to Elana Elkin on receiving the first place poster award from the Society of Toxicology for her work on Transcriptional profiling of the response to the trichlorethylene metabolite S-(1,2-dichlorovinyl)-L-cysteine revealed activation of the elF2a/ATF4 integrated stress response in two in vitro placentol models.
University of Michigan researchers led by M-LEEaD's Stuart Batterman worked with the Southwest Detroit Community Benefits Coalition to evaluate noise impacts of trucks in Southwest Detroit. Their study sought to use new metrics to measure the impact of noise, and they hope the analysis will be used to inform city truck routes and alternative routes as the Gordie Howe International Bridge is under construction. Read the full analysis here.
Natalie Sampson was featured with a grantee highlight in Partnership for Environmental Public Health's May 2021 newsletter. The highlight focuses on Natalie's research and her efforts in drawing connections between land use and infrastructure decisions and public health. Read more about Natalie and her research in the grantee highlight here.
Michigan CEAL, a transdisciplinary partnership led in part by M-LEEaD's Barbara Israel, has been awarded an additional $1.4 million to support an additional year of community-based COVID-19 interventions. The Michigan CEAL project was previously funded $1.4 million in Fall of 2020. Year two of the project will focus on improving access to the COVID-19 vaccine in under resourced populations by supporting community-based vaccine clinics and testing interventions. Read the full press release here.
A recent health impact assessment led in part by Amy Schulz aimed to assess DTE's coal-fired power plants. The findings showed that pollution from these plants disproportionately affects low- to moderate-income neighborhoods inhabited by African Americans, Latinx, and Arab Americans. Speaking on the research, Schulz said "We have opportunities to reduce the inequitable distribution of health costs." Read the full article here.
Brianna Siracuse Starts Internship with Breast Cancer Prevention Partners
Congratulations to Brianna Siracuse on her summer internship with Breast Cancer Prevention Partners! Brianna is a first year EHS MPH candidate who has been working as a part-time Research Assistant for M-LEEaD since September 2020. Brianna will spend the summer as a Program and Policy Intern at Breast Cancer Prevention Partners, a science-based policy and advocacy organization focused on addressing environmental exposures linked to breast cancer. We wish her the best in her experience this summer.
For the 2021-2022 year, NCID’s Anti-Racism Collaborative will partner with the Stepping uP Against Racism and Xenophobia (SPARX) Project to offer a unique postdoctoral fellowship opportunity. The fellow will work closely with a group of developmental scientists to design, launch, and evaluate a public clearinghouse of knowledge regarding racism and xenophobia in childhood and adolescence. The initial appointment will be for one year, with the potential for renewal for a second year.
Applicants must have a PhD in human development, psychology, public health, education, sociology, or a closely related discipline by time of appointment, and doctoral or comparable terminal degrees should be completed between July 1, 2018 and July 1, 2021.
Application deadline isMay 28, 2021. Learn more and apply here.
The OVPR Anti-Racism Grants aim to catalyze innovative research and scholarship efforts that will advance knowledge and understanding around complex societal racial inequalities that can inform actions to achieve equity and justice. The program was created to partner with Provost’s Anti-Racism Initiative. The OVPR Anti-Racism Grants program will run for two cycles over Fiscal Years 2021-22, with $900K in funds to be awarded from OVPR across the two-year period. For each program cycle, up to seven proposals will be funded – five at levels up to $50K and two at levels up to $100K.
A key goal for the OVPR Anti-Racism Grants program is to support rigorous, intellectually ambitious, and technically sound research that is relevant to the most pressing questions and compelling opportunities in relation to racial equity and justice in society. Another goal is to provide funding and research development support to PI teams with projects that would position the PIs/teams to be competitive for future external funding.
Applications are due June 1, 2021. Learn more and apply here.
Recent Publications citing M-LEEaD:
Elkin ER, Bakulski KM, Colacino JA, Bridges D, Kilburn BA, Armant DR, Loch-Caruso R. Transcriptional profiling of the response to the trichloroethylene metabolite S-(1,2-dichlorovinyl)-L-cysteine revealed activation of the eIF2α/ATF4 integrated stress response in two in vitro placental models. Arch Toxicol. 2021 Mar 16:1–25. doi: 10.1007/s00204-021-03011-5. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 33725128; PMCID: PMC7961173.
Aung MT, Yu Y, Ferguson KK, Cantonwine DE, Zeng L, McElrath TF, Pennathur S, Mukherjee B, Meeker JD. Cross-Sectional Estimation of Endogenous Biomarker Associations with Prenatal Phenols, Phthalates, Metals, and Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons in Single-Pollutant and Mixtures Analysis Approaches. Environ Health Perspect. 2021 Mar;129(3):37007. doi: 10.1289/EHP7396. Epub 2021 Mar 24. PMID: 33761273; PMCID: PMC7990518.
Buxton MA, Meraz-Cruz N, Sanchez BN, Foxman B, Castillo-Castrejon M, O'Neill MS, Vadillo-Ortega F. Timing of Cervico-Vaginal Cytokine Collection during Pregnancy and Preterm Birth: A Comparative Analysis in the PRINCESA Cohort. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2021 Mar 26;18(7):3436. doi: 10.3390/ijerph18073436. PMID: 33810264; PMCID: PMC8036528.
Erinc A, Davis MB, Padmanabhan V, Langen E, Goodrich JM. Considering environmental exposures to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) as risk factors for hypertensive disorders of pregnancy. Environ Res. 2021 Apr 3;197:111113. doi: 10.1016/j.envres.2021.111113. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 33823190.
Aung MT, MBakulski K, Feinberg JI, F Dou J, D Meeker J, Mukherjee B, Loch-Caruso R, Ladd-Acosta C, Volk HE, Croen LA, Hertz-Picciotto I, Newschaffer CJ, Fallin MD. Maternal blood metal concentrations and whole blood DNA methylation during pregnancy in the Early Autism Risk Longitudinal Investigation (EARLI). Epigenetics. 2021 Apr 2:1-16. doi: 10.1080/15592294.2021.1897059. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 33794742.
Click here for a PDF with useful information about NIH Public Access Policy regarding citing the center grant.
Per NIH grants policy, all publications, press releases, and other documents relevant to research funded by the center must include a specific acknowledgement of support. For the EHS Core Center, this statement may read:
“Support for this research was provided by grant P30ES017885 from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, National Institutes of Health. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.”
