Warren, Booker, Markey, Urge EPA and NIH to Provide Robust Funding for Environmental Health Disparities Research
Washington, D.C. - United States Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), and Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) sent a letter to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Acting Administrator Jane Nishida and National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis Collins expressing concerns with a reduction of funding and available awards for the Centers of Excellence on Environmental Health Disparities (EHD) Research program grants during the Trump administration. In the letter, the senators also requested information about the agencies' environmental justice efforts, and stressed that the federal government should be dedicating robust resources to environmental justice and health disparities research.
"As the nation faces a dire public health crisis with disproportionate impacts on low-income communities and communities of color, the research conducted by the EHD centers are more important than ever," the lawmakers wrote.
"Given reports that 'Black and Latino people have been disproportionately affected by the coronavirus in a widespread manner that spans the country, throughout hundreds of counties in urban, suburban and rural areas, and across all age groups,' the federal government should be taking every step to address environmental injustices and health disparities, which includes providing robust funding for programs that research these health disparities," continued the lawmakers.
The EHD Research program, jointly administered through the EPA and institutes within the NIH, "encourages basic, biological, clinical, epidemiological, behavioral and/or social scientific investigations of disease conditions that are known to be a significant burden in low socioeconomic and health disparate populations." The most recent funding opportunity in 2014 allowed for five centers, while the 2019 funding opportunity, which no longer included EPA participation, reduced the program to three centers.
The currently-funded projects, located in Arizona, California, Maryland, Massachusetts, and New Mexico, are researching cumulative effects of contaminant exposure and how they combine with social stressors, how different socioeconomic groups are differentially exposed to environmental hazards, and how land use contributes to environmental health disparities.
In Massachusetts, the Center for Research on Environmental and Social Stressors in Housing Across the Life Course, jointly administered by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Boston University School of Public Health, examines "multiple health outcomes across the life course, operating within [the] Center's targeted low-income communities (Chelsea and Dorchester) as well as across Massachusetts."
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