Mission and Goals of the Center

The CEHT will foster and facilitate interactions between a number of related activities within the Brown community, including the Division of Biology and Medicine, the Division of Engineering, the Department of Community Health, the Program in Public Health, the Department of Sociology, the Department of Geology, the Environmental Change Initiative (ECI), the Center for Environmental Studies (CES) and the Marine Biological Laboratories at Woods Hole.  Specific goals include:

• Continued support of the SBRP as an integrated basic and translational research and training program.
• The collaborative establishment of a “Generations Project”; a family cohort that will address specific state-wide challenges in the environmental component of maternal and child health.
• Development of Environmental Health as a discipline in the emerging Brown University School of Public Health, supporting the School’s initial accreditation.  Going forward, CEHT will further support faculty recruitment, facilitate teaching and grow the field such that the Brown University School of Public Health is a recognized leader in this cornerstone discipline.
• Encourage the integration and unification of Environmental Health across the entire Brown campus, including multiple Departments (e.g. civil engineering, community health, geology, pathology & lab medicine, sociology), and the Marine Biological Laboratory as well as the previously noted Center for Environmental Studies and the Environmental Change Initiative.
• Develop and enlarge the research and training base in translational science.  Initial efforts underway include preparation of an application to the Burroughs Wellcome Fund to develop translational doctoral training, and the development of the Gene-Environment Collaboratory for the CTSA application.
• Enhancement of the Brown efforts in Personalized Medicine by establishing and coordinating large population and translational research efforts across the hospitals and the University.
• Direct support of the Biobank initiative through grants and research use.
• Further development of significant grant funding that supports research in environmental health across the University and Hospitals by competing for program projects (P01s) and center grants (P30s) that broadly catalyze these efforts, and sharing funds via pilot project support.
• Engage in effective Community Outreach to communicate the potential health hazards and to guide the development of plans for the appropriate remediation and reuse of contaminated sites, assuring continued economic development and job growth within our densely populated urban and suburban centers.