The US-Mexico border region faces serious health challenges including increasing morbidity and rapidly growing health disparities. Therefore, the National Institutes of Health funded the Hispanic Health Disparities Research Center (HHDRC) as a partnership between the University of Texas at El Paso and the University of Texas Health Science Center Houston/School of Public Health. This Revision proposes the expansion of the scope of the existing HHDRC by integrating a new thematic Core focused on Environment. The long term goal is to better understand and address determinants of environmental health disparities for heterogeneous Mexican-origin and Hispanic populations through research, capacity building and outreach activities.
The specific aims of the Environment Core, designed to help the HHDRC achieve its aims, are as follows: 1) Conduct research to evaluate complex interactions between social, built and natural environmental systems, while clarifying which aspects of Mexican-origin/Hispanic status are most important as determinants of environmental health disparities;2) Build research and training capacities to examine and address environmental health disparities;and 3) Facilitate the translation of environmental health disparities research into policy, public health practice, and community-based engagement. The approach is innovative because two transdisciplinary research studies focus on understanding the role of Hispanic heterogeneity as it interacts with built/natural environmental conditions to shape health risks using complementary, but employ distinct methodologies (i.e., multilevel modeling and the case-crossover design). Within the HHDRC, the Environment Core is innovative since its thematic focus on the Environment crosscuts the research, training, and engagement activities of the other Cores. The proposed Revision is significant because the activities of the Core (e.g., transdisciplinary studies, student and faculty pilot research project, mentoring of student research assistants, curricular changes, and engagement with community constituents) will seek to advance knowledge in order to address disparities. Ultimately, such knowledge has the potential to inform interventions and policy to reduce health disparities among Hispanic populations.
This Revision is relevant to public health because of the serious environmental threats facing border communities disproportionately inhabited by people of Mexican-origin and those living in poverty. The explicit focus on Hispanic heterogeneity will change how researchers understand and seek to reduce health disparities, making the project relevant to the NIH's Mission to foster discovery that will protect health.
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