? COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT CORE The Environmental Research and Translation for Health (EaRTH) Center Community Engagement Core (CEC) will capitalize on growing recognition that environmental health is within the purview of healthcare and the transformational changes in medical education taking place at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and beyond, to mainstream environmental health into the education and resources provided to our target audience of graduate-level (nursing and doctoral level seeking, residents, and fellows) and practicing healthcare professionals. The goal of the EaRTH Center CEC is to bridge health professionals and researchers so that timely, environmental health research serves and protects public health. This ?upstream? approach will provide health professionals the knowledge and resources they need to understand and address their patients' environmental health needs in the clinic while also creating a feedback loop permitting health professionals to inform researchers about their environmental health questions, research needs, and clinical educational gaps. To accomplish this, we will integrate environmental health science and its clinical application into the foundation of learning that graduate-level and practicing healthcare professionals receive throughout their careers. If students are to become effective healthcare professionals who protect and preserve patient and public health, environmental health must be embedded into clinical education. Further, environmental health education and resources must be provided to practicing healthcare professionals so they can better identify and prevent upstream sources of exposures that lead to disease and communicate effectively with their patients.
Our Specific Aims are to: 1) Advance environmental health education within and beyond UCSF's graduate-level healthcare professional programs and in health professional organizations; 2) Support in-depth training of future leaders in environmental medicine by facilitating transdisciplinary learning among students, EaRTH Center members, and the healthcare professional community; and 3) Advance environmental health literacy, communication, and engagement of practicing health professionals by piloting and evaluating existing environmental health education materials and clinical tools so that best practices may be identified; gaps may be addressed; and effective materials and tools may ultimately be implemented at UCSF and throughout the nation. Our Center's location at UCSF? ranked in the top five medical schools for science, training, and care ?and our extensive track record in this arena puts us in a unique and strong position to accomplish our goal. Through the CEC, we will create healthcare professionals skilled in addressing and preventing environmental contributors to patient disease and community health disparities and advance our effort to embed environmental health within healthcare.
