1. INTEGRATED HEALTH SCIENCES FACILITY CORE: ABSTRACT The Integrative Health Sciences Facility Core (IHSFC) will provide infrastructure and highly focused trans- disciplinary services to CACHET including study design; participant recruitment and enrollment; data collection and management; collection, processing and storage of biologic and environmental samples; and innovative approaches to exposure estimation using both traditional and cutting-edge techniques. This array of services will provide tools to translate fundamental research into knowledge supporting disease prevention and the mitigation of racial/ethnic environmental health disparities. The IHSFC will have leadership at both University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) and University of Chicago (UofC), and will build upon the existing research resources at these institutions to ensure that Core support is used for the development of additional resources that are key to conducting EHS work. Many of the resources that the IHSFC will use to meet the environmental health sciences (EHS) translational research needs of CACHET investigators exist at our two institutions but will be modified, centralized and efficiently organized between the two institutions by leveraging the institution-specific strengths. IHSFC personnel include experts in epidemiological study design, population exposure studies, specimen collection and quality assurance, and environmental exposure assessment. IHSFC personnel will collaborate with personnel in the Statistics and Modeling Facility Core to address the needs of CACHET investigators requiring statistical services for the planning, implementation and analysis of EHS studies as well as personnel in the Biomarkers Core (BC) to address molecular assay requirements involving biomarkers of environmental exposures and environmental signatures in human biological materials. The IHSFC will also provide interpretation of results and facilitate dissemination of the results to Chicago communities and beyond in conjunction with the Community Outreach and Engagement Core (COEC). In addition, the IHSFC will work with the COEC as well as relevant Institutional CTSA and Cancer Center Cores to translate community-based EHS questions and concerns into specific scientific hypotheses that may be supported by CACHET through the Pilot Project Program.
