Engagement

Teens pose in smoky air wearing masks and holding signs that say "I love my airshed" and "color out smoke"

Fostering bi-directional capacity-building between Center researchers and public stakeholders.

Our Community Engagement Core (CEC) focuses on building capacity and facilitating collaborations through internal investments, external partnerships, and investing in the next generation of environmental health researchers. The Center is focusing on cutting edge, dynamic areas of science (epigenetics, metabolomics, and nanotoxicology) and it is essential, now more than ever, to keep the public engaged in the promise and future of research. We believe our role is as catalyst and connector to meet the needs and interests of trainees, Environmental Health Science (EHS) and Clinical and Translational Science (CTS) researchers, and select community-based organizations and disease advocacy groups.

The Goals of the CEC are to:

Partner with stakeholder groups with an interest or need related to ecogenetics research, research ethics, or population-based health research to develop action-oriented education projects
Build EHS and CTS researcher capacity for public engagement, ethics, and outreach
Facilitate career development of the next generation of environmental health and translational science researchers, focusing on outreach and ethics capacity
Leverage collaborations locally and nationally to develop, refine, and promote models and best practices related to outreach and public engagement in environmental health, ecogenetics, and ethical research practices