To capture the full effects of environmental exposures on human health outcomes, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) is expanding the focus of the Children's Health Exposure Analysis Resource (CHEAR) to encompass health across the lifecourse: the Human Health Exposure Analysis Resource (HHEAR). The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai is applying to be the HHEAR Data Center, providing intellectual and logistical support for the maintenance, analysis, interpretation, curation, and reuse of data generated by HHEAR in support of extramural research projects. Since 2015, we at Mount Sinai, in collaboration with data scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, have served as the CHEAR Data Center, supporting studies of children's environmental health research. We propose to build on our established infrastructure, expertise, and experience as the CHEAR Data Center to provide a repository for all data and support for statistical analysis and interpretation for investigators using the data generated within and outside the network. The HHEAR Data Center will provide: 1) data repository and management resources; 2) data science resources; 3) statistical consultation and analysis services; and 4) collaborative research support. Through these efforts, we seek to ultimately maximize the potential use and impact of exposure data both within and outside of HHEAR. Indeed, investigators who access resources provided by the HHEAR Data Center will leverage the potential of big data to accelerate environmental health studies far beyond their original funded goals, and potentially accomplish research that was previously thought infeasible or too costly. The HHEAR Data Center is critical to advancing the scientific community's ability to examine the environment on an exposome scale: the design of the Data Repository will facilitate manageable and efficient combining of existing data sets; the availability of common vocabularies developed by the Data Science Resource will contribute to maximizing the usable data from each study; and the Statistical Services and Analysis Resource will ultimately apply their exposome-related analytic methods to address hypotheses on the environmental health of pooled study populations. Further, the Data Center leadership comprises world leaders in Environmental Epidemiology, Computer Science, Environmental Biostatistics, and Ontology, already working together as the CHEAR Data Center, who are eager to continue and expand their efforts in service of the HHEAR Network. Our existing Data Center will be expanded in both resources and infrastructure, including through significant institutional support, to meet the requirements of the HHEAR Network. Thus, we at Mount Sinai are uniquely positioned to provide a state-of-the-art Data Center for the environmental health research community.
Epidemiologic research into the exposome, or sum of human environmental exposures across the lifecourse, will benefit from coordinated efforts and resources that leverage disparate data sets to create a whole that is greater than its parts. The HHEAR Data Center will provide critical resources, expertise, and infrastructure enabling investigators to pool multiple datasets; access, analyze, and interpret these data; and to address hypotheses that go beyond their original funded aims. By achieving this mission, the HHEAR Data Center will accelerate the pace of environmental health research throughout the community to examine the environment on an exposome scale.
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