ENVIRONMENTAL MONITORING AND INTERPRETATION CORE - SUMMARY The EC will serve our partner tribal communities and other projects of the Center in numerous ways. The EC will identify and quantify the magnitude and distribution concentrations of a mixture of metals in environmental media through fate, transport and dispersion models and measurements, and in urine samples for tribal populations.
The Specific Aims of the EC provide the following services in support of Native EH Equity Center: 1) Characterize the spatial distribution of metal concentrations in drinking water sources on tribal lands; 2) Quantify environmental exposures to metals resulting from traditional and cultural practices; 3) Assess exposures to metals through biomonitoring to link with environmental data; and 4) Identify pathways of primary concern to improve health equity. These outputs will provide community-representative exposure estimates for our three tribal community partners, and will be applied in the animal studies of DNA repair, and population- based association studies of immune function (Research Projects, RP1 and RP2). Coordination with the Administrative Core is central to ensuring that the integration and overall focus of the Center will remain responsive to community concerns and needs. Collaboration with the Community Engagement Core will ensure that findings obtained in all projects will be communicated to the communities to inform actions to mitigate risk. The Center offers an opportunity to translate the findings from all projects in ways that are designed to benefit underserved tribal communities with the goal of enhancing health equity.
