December 17, 2009
UC Berkeley teams with Stanford Medical to research childhood health and disease
Ira Tager, professor and head of Epidemiology, was awarded $1.5 million by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to establish a formative Children's Environmental Health and Disease Prevention Center at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health in collaboration with the Stanford University School of Medicine. The 3-year exploratory grant will allow the formative center to initiate individual research projects on childhood diseases and disorders, build community connections, and develop new research teams. It will lead to a full 5-year center application.
The overall goal of the new center is to study the effects of in utero and childhood exposure to ambient air pollutants and bioaerosols on birth outcomes (low birth weight, small for gestational age, structural birth defects) and the relation of these early life exposures on the occurrence of asthma in the lower half of the Central Valley of California. The San Joaquin Valley is one of the fastest growing areas of California, with an ethnically diverse population, industrial farming, and growing cities.
Professor Tager will collaborate with John Balmes, professor of environmental health sciences and S. Katherine Hammond, who chairs the Environmental Health Sciences division. Collaborators at Stanford School of Medicine include Jeffrey Gould and Richard Shaw.
The NIEHS/EPA Centers for Children's Environmental Health and Disease Prevention examine the effect of environmental exposures on children's health. Through a multidisciplinary research approach including basic, applied, and community-based participatory research, the centers translate and communicate their findings to clinical and public health professionals and policy makers to alleviate the burden of environmentally induced diseases in children.