The University of Iowa proposes to continue its NIEHS supported Environmental Health Sciences Research Center (EHSRC) that is dedicated to three goals: 1) to conduct interdisciplinary environmental health research with a focus on agricultural and rural environmental exposures and health effects; 2) to promote greater research interaction between the several existing environmental health research units, enhance ongoing environmental health research, and facilitate initiation of new collaborative and interdisciplinary environmental health research; and 3) to serve as a technical resource to the State of Iowa, the region, the nation, and to international agencies in the area of agricultural and rural environmental health. The Center includes 40 faculty members from nine departments of the Colleges of Medicine and Engineering. Center faculty have completed 14 environmental health research projects in the last year, and are currently engaged in 76 environmental health research projects. The EHSRC includes an Administrative Core that operates the Center's Pilot Project Grant Program and the Center's Outreach and Education Program; three research cores including the Cancer Core, the Pulmonary Biology Core, and the Occupational Health Core; and four dedicated research facilities including the Health Registry Facility, the Environmental Assessment Facility, the Immunology and Biomarker Facility, and the Inhalation Toxicology Facility. The Center now proposes to add a fifth research facility, the Clinical Exposure Facility. The EHSRC promotes research through use of its dedicated research facilities and equipment, its Pilot Project Grant Program, its seminars and conferences, formal peer review for environmental health grants, research coordination and planning, national and international scientific exchange, information transfer and communication, and recruitment and stabilization of Center faculty. The Center will continue to focus on three research programs that are highly relevant to agricultural and rural environmental exposures and their associated health effects: 1) environmental cancer research, 2) environmental lung disease research, 3) agricultural and rural occupational health research. The Center has made substantial progress in its first five years and, with new EHSRC facilities and substantial long- term funding for environmental health research, the future for the success of the EHSRC is bright.
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