Abstract

Our workshop will give participants the practical knowledge and tools needed to share personal results with participants in environmental exposure studies.

As the fields of environmental epidemiology and public health shift toward favoring more transparent and community-engaged research approaches, reporting back personal study results has been emphasized as ethical best practice. Report-back acknowledges participants’ right-to-know their data, empowers them to take action to reduce personal and collective exposures, and facilitates a climate of openness and respect. In addition, report-back can improve study recruitment and retention, and helps researchers discover exposure sources through participant consultation.

Though groups such the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine have recommended that report-back should become routine, many researchers have been slow to adopt the practice, often hindered by the time and skills required for effective report-back. To facilitate researchers in returning high-quality personal results from environmental exposure studies, researchers at Silent Spring developed the Digital Exposure Report-Back Interface (DERBI) with NIH support. This interactive, web-based tool presents personalized chemical results in a way that study participants can easily understand and makes it easier for researchers to share personal results in studies of all sizes. Generated reports can include information about chemicals detected, potential health effects, strategies to reduce exposures, and overall study findings. DERBI also includes analytical tools that help researchers interpret results, including identifying common chemical mixtures.

The workshop will include a 30-minute presentation and discussion on ethical and practical considerations and best practices for report-back followed by a 2.5-hour session in which researchers gain hands-on practice in report preparation using their own data or a provided model dataset. Using an easy-to-use DERBI dashboard, researchers without software expertise will gain skills needed to create their own high-quality biomonitoring reports for print, computer or smartphones.

Abstract

Wildfires are increasing in size and severity, leading to longer wildfire seasons and a higher number of days wherein air quality is considered poor. Wildfire smoke exposure is linked to adverse respiratory, cardiovascular, and perinatal health and to mortality. Gaps remain in understanding the health impacts of wildfire smoke exposure, including smoke composition, methods for measuring exposure and characterizing health outcomes, exposure pathways, and differential effects across the lifespan, particularly for wildland urban interface fires where exposures are more complex, toxic, and direct. Translation of observational research to interventions to reduce health risks from wildfire smoke, and implementation research on proposed interventions is needed. We will use interactive, discussion-based activities to characterize priorities for research on wildfire smoke exposure across the lifespan.

Participants will complete a pre-workshop survey to identify research gaps and priorities to inform interactive elements. First, the workshop will identify areas of collaboration amongst attendees, who will select a topic (wildfire smoke and perinatal health, risk communications, implementation of public health interventions, exposure and data science) and join colleagues to discuss shared interests and priority actions, then repeat with a second topic. Attendees will then inform research priorities by engaging in facilitated activities to identify and prioritize research needs. Using a World Café format, participants will rotate between tables where they will discuss pre-identified topics (wildfire smoke composition, exposure across the lifespan, intervention and implementation, data integration, data collection approaches/methods, risk communications) and identify and prioritize research needs on wildfire smoke exposure across the lifespan. Spending 5-6 minutes at each table before rotating, participants will use dot-voting, Likert scales, and ranking. A facilitator at each table will provide context for the activity and desired outcomes. This workshop will help identify public health and scientific needs and facilitate new collaborations associated with wildfire smoke exposure across the lifespan.

Abstract

Implementation science (IS), defined as the study of methods to promote the adoption and integration of evidence-based interventions (e.g., programs, practices, and policies) into routine health care, community, and public health settings, closes the research to practice gap and can lead to actionable change across individual, community, organizational and societal levels. IS holds potential to improve environmental public health through the adaptation, uptake, sustainment and spread of environmental health interventions that prevent or mitigate harmful exposures and support environmental health equity. Recognizing the need to build capacity in IS in environmental health, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences hosted the Advancing Environmental Health Equity through Implementation Science virtual workshop in 2022. This workshop highlighted the need for more training in IS and its application to environmental health issues. To help address this need, this half-day workshop will provide a more in-depth overview of IS and its application to environmental health issues in the United States (e.g., greening interventions) and globally (e.g., clean cookstove uptake and scale-up in low- and middle-income countries). Specific topics that will be covered include common IS theories and frameworks, IS study designs and methods, implementation strategies, implementation outcomes, and tips for writing IS grant applications as well as an overview of current IS funding opportunities from the National Institutes of Health. Participants are encouraged to bring example(s) of their current or planned research to this workshop where they will have the opportunity to engage with the facilitator to identify potential IS research questions. After attending this workshop, participants will be able to (1) describe IS and how it differs from effectiveness research and (2) identify possible IS questions in their own work.