The candidate is currently an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Johns Hopkins and a pediatric allergist/immunologist, epidemiologist, and environmental health scientist whose broad career goal is to develop an understanding of the effects of the environment on asthma that results in feasible and actionable public health interventions to prevent asthma and reduce asthma morbidity. As the complex interplay between microbes, allergens, and pollutants must be understood in order to make significant progress in environmental control strategies for prevention and treatment of allergic disease, one major aim of this project is to extend her research program to study the effects of environmental microbial exposures on asthma. In addition, the candidate has a strong track record of mentoring trainees in patient-oriented research (POR) and proposes to develop advanced mentorship skills with a combination of didactic and mentored learning. Thus, the second aim of this proposal is to protect her time for mentorship and further development of mentoring skills. The mentorship skills and research development will occur, in part, in the context of the proposed research project, which aims to test the hypothesis that environmental exposure to SE+ S. aureus causes asthma morbidity in urban children in a SE-specific IgE dependent manner.
This Midcareer Investigator Award in Patient-Oriented Research will have two major public health impacts. First, it will expand the pool of highly trained investigators in patient-oriented research; and second, the research program will lend new insights into the effects of environmental microbial exposures on asthma in inner-city children, a group that continues to have disproportionate asthma morbidity.
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