The Children’s Environmental Health Center (CEHC) of Mount Sinai Hospital (CEHC Homepage)
1. What person, group or organization is being profiled, and why are they of interest to this project?
The Children’s Environmental Health Center (CEHC) of Mount Sinai Hospital in NYC provides and supports programs in research, education, and patient care designed to protect the city’s children from environmental threats to their health. The CEHC focuses on preventive medicine and methods to reduce the impact of harmful environmental factors on the city's most vulnerable population - its youth.
2. What have they done – through research, or a public health program or education forum, for example-- that illustrates how they have worked to improve air pollution governance and environmental public health?
The CEHC is a major research institute that collaborates with its parent affiliation, Mount Sinai, as well as the Icahn School of Medicine to explore the root cause of various diseases that are linked to environmental factors, such as air pollution. The CEHC aims to raise awareness of such issues through educating the public, and provides resources to parents to take steps in reducing the exposure of their children to harmful environmental factors.
The CEHC funds Pilot Programs designed to reduce the impact of air pollution on the health of NYC children; in 2011, for example, they funded research investigating the, “Impact of LEED-Certified Green Housing on Asthma in Urban NYC”.
The CEHC also provided a series of workshops in 2010 that educated New Yorkers on ways to reduce exposure to harmful environmental factors, including “Asthma Triggers in the Home”.
3. What timeline of events illustrates how this way of addressing environmental public health has developed?
2007: The CEHC is formed
2009: The CEHC begins the National Children's Study (NCS), a large scale, long term study of US children designed to study environmental influences on child health and development.
2010: The CEHC launches the Autism and Learning Disabilities Discovery and Prevention Project, aimed at discovering the preventable environmental causes of Autism.
2010: The Pilot Project Research Program begins, where the CEHC awards seed grants to encourage investigation into the environmental causes of disease in children.
4. Does this person, group or organization claim to have a new or unique way of addressing environmental public health? Does this approach point to or suggest problems with other approaches?
The CEHC addresses environmental public health through three main avenues: Research, Education, and Patient Care.
Researchers at the CEHC explore a variety of topics including how various harmful environmental factors originate and how they interact with the human genome to cause disease. Researchers also attempt to systematically map and control hazardous environmental exposures in the East Harlem community.
As an integral component of Mt. Sinai’s Icahn School of Medicine, the CEHC is also instrumental in educating medical professionals in environmental pediatrics and preventive medicine. The CEHC also offers a capstone project in which pediatricians follow a 3 year postdoctoral fellowship in pediatric environmental health in order to specialize in environmental pediatrics.
The CEHC also works through the Mount Sinai Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Unit (PEHSU) to provide clinical consultations to families, public health officials, and community organizations concerned with the issue of children’s environmental health.
5. What data have they collected or used to support their approach to environmental public health? What visualizations of this data have been created?
Since its inception in 2007, researchers at the CEHC have published over 800 articles on topics in children's environmental health. Of these scientific publications, over 200 have been published in medical journals. CEHC research data has also been featured in textbooks, testimonies to government officials, international conferences, and national news publications.
As an institution devoted to preventive medicine, the CEHC regularly monitors regional climate and air quality information through regional and atmospheric chemistry models. The CEHC also monitors ozone levels, which have been shown to be a environmental contributor to asthma when levels are in excess. (Future Climate Change May Increase Asthma Attacks in Children)
6. What research has the organization produce or drawn on in their initiatives – in the last year, and over the last decade?
The CEHC has an extensive collection of scientific research articles published by their staff on the negative effects of Air Pollution on NYC residents. (CEHC Scientific Publications)
Examples of relevant publications:
Claudio L, Torres T, Sanjurjo E, Sherman L, Landrigan PJ. Environmental health sciences education-A tool for achieving environmental equity and protecting our children. Environ Health Perspect 1998; 106:849-855.
Asthma in American Children. Congressional Staff Briefing: Asthma and the Environment: Protecting our Children [Landrigan PJ]. 1-4 (1999).
Roy A, Sheffield PE, Wong K, Trasande L. Economic consequences of subchronic air pollutant exposure for pediatric asthma hospitalizations. Pediatric Academic Societies Meeting; May 2010.
Trasande L, Thurston GD. The role of air pollution in asthma and other pediatric morbidities. J Allergy Clin Immunol 2005; 115(4):689-699.
7. What kinds of technology and infrastructure do they rely on in the production of environmental health care?
The CEHC has a synergistic relationship with its parent affiliation, Mount Sinai Hospital, which utilizes and also provides data for the basis of the research undertaken by the CEHC. The CEHC also collaborates with the New York State Department of Health, which provides important records such as the history of pediatric asthma-related hospital visits in the NYC metropolitan area.
8. What social ecology does this person, group or organization work within, and how did it shape their way of conceiving and engaging asthma?
The CEHC works to improve the health of NYC children in Mount Sinai's home community of East Harlem and within all 5 boroughs of NYC. However, the CEHC's mission of research and prevention spread far beyond the borders of any one city.
9. What events or data seem to have motivated their ways of thinking about and engaging environmental health?
The CEHC's work is motivated in part by data that has shown the rise in incidence of childhood diseases that stem from negative environmental factors. Asthma alone has doubled in frequency since the 1980s and is now the leading cause of emergency room visits and hospitalizations in America. The National Academy of Sciences also determined that environmental factors contribute to 28% of developmental disorders in children. The fact that both of these diseases are preventable to a degree is clear motivation for the CEHC to identify which environmental factors are to fault and how to reduce exposure to them.
10. What funding enables their work and possibly shapes their way of thinking about environmental health?
The CEHC is supported mainly through philanthropic donations and from major research institutions such as the National Institute of Health (NIH); since its inception in 2007, the CEHC has generated over $11 million in grants. The CEHC also shares funding and resources from its parent hospital, Mount Sinai, as well as from the Icahn School of Medicine.
11. What in the history of this person, group or organization likely shaped the way they conceived or and engage environmental health?
The CEHC was formed in response to the rise of a new series of health challenges that face the children of today that stem from modern environmental factors. As focus shifts from preventing the spread of infectious diseases that plagued past generations, the CEHC hopes to prevent the environmentally-linked diseases that plague modern day America, such as Asthma, Developmental Disorders (ADHS, Autism Spectrum Disorders, and others), and Childhood leukemia, all of which have increased sharply in incidence over the past couple of decades.
12. What does this person, group or organization seem to find methodologically challenging or concerning in dealing with environmental health?
One challenge that the CEHC seems to face is applying their research on the causes of environmentally linked diseases to catalyzing real world changes that implement their findings. Without proper influence on city and state departments such as the NYS Department of Health, the CEHC's ultimate goal of preventing exposure and raising awareness of negative environmental factors may go unnoticed.
13. What kinds of governance are (implicitly or explicitly) called for in the way they think about environmental health?
The CEHC conducts research into the environmental causes of childhood disease in order to translate these findings into solutions that legislators can implement in an effort to restrict harmful emissions and ensure the safe disposal of hazardous environmental elements. The CEHC also pushes for increased awareness and promotes public education in the causes of diseases stemming from the environment.
14. How can The Asthma Files enable or supplement this way of thinking about environmental health, and the work of this person, group or organization?
The Asthma Files could provide data from other cities that the CEHC could use to supplement their research. Because each city faces unique challenges and characteristics that affect the environmental health of its inhabitants, the CEHC could use the data compiled on the Asthma Files to provide preventative medical solutions that can be implemented on a wider basis.
(CEHC Homepage)
1. What person, group or organization is being profiled, and why are they of interest to this project?
The Children’s Environmental Health Center (CEHC) of Mount Sinai Hospital in NYC provides and supports programs in research, education, and patient care designed to protect the city’s children from environmental threats to their health. The CEHC focuses on preventive medicine and methods to reduce the impact of harmful environmental factors on the city's most vulnerable population - its youth.
2. What have they done – through research, or a public health program or education forum, for example-- that illustrates how they have worked to improve air pollution governance and environmental public health?
The CEHC is a major research institute that collaborates with its parent affiliation, Mount Sinai, as well as the Icahn School of Medicine to explore the root cause of various diseases that are linked to environmental factors, such as air pollution. The CEHC aims to raise awareness of such issues through educating the public, and provides resources to parents to take steps in reducing the exposure of their children to harmful environmental factors.
The CEHC funds Pilot Programs designed to reduce the impact of air pollution on the health of NYC children; in 2011, for example, they funded research investigating the, “Impact of LEED-Certified Green Housing on Asthma in Urban NYC”.
The CEHC also provided a series of workshops in 2010 that educated New Yorkers on ways to reduce exposure to harmful environmental factors, including “Asthma Triggers in the Home”.
3. What timeline of events illustrates how this way of addressing environmental public health has developed?
(List of CEHC Projects over the Years)
2007: The CEHC is formed
2009: The CEHC begins the National Children's Study (NCS), a large scale, long term study of US children designed to study environmental influences on child health and development.
2010: The CEHC launches the Autism and Learning Disabilities Discovery and Prevention Project, aimed at discovering the preventable environmental causes of Autism.
2010: The Pilot Project Research Program begins, where the CEHC awards seed grants to encourage investigation into the environmental causes of disease in children.
4. Does this person, group or organization claim to have a new or unique way of addressing environmental public health? Does this approach point to or suggest problems with other approaches?
The CEHC addresses environmental public health through three main avenues: Research, Education, and Patient Care.
Researchers at the CEHC explore a variety of topics including how various harmful environmental factors originate and how they interact with the human genome to cause disease. Researchers also attempt to systematically map and control hazardous environmental exposures in the East Harlem community.
As an integral component of Mt. Sinai’s Icahn School of Medicine, the CEHC is also instrumental in educating medical professionals in environmental pediatrics and preventive medicine. The CEHC also offers a capstone project in which pediatricians follow a 3 year postdoctoral fellowship in pediatric environmental health in order to specialize in environmental pediatrics.
The CEHC also works through the Mount Sinai Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Unit (PEHSU) to provide clinical consultations to families, public health officials, and community organizations concerned with the issue of children’s environmental health.
5. What data have they collected or used to support their approach to environmental public health? What visualizations of this data have been created?
Since its inception in 2007, researchers at the CEHC have published over 800 articles on topics in children's environmental health. Of these scientific publications, over 200 have been published in medical journals. CEHC research data has also been featured in textbooks, testimonies to government officials, international conferences, and national news publications.
As an institution devoted to preventive medicine, the CEHC regularly monitors regional climate and air quality information through regional and atmospheric chemistry models. The CEHC also monitors ozone levels, which have been shown to be a environmental contributor to asthma when levels are in excess. (Future Climate Change May Increase Asthma Attacks in Children)
6. What research has the organization produce or drawn on in their initiatives – in the last year, and over the last decade?
The CEHC has an extensive collection of scientific research articles published by their staff on the negative effects of Air Pollution on NYC residents.
(CEHC Scientific Publications)
Examples of relevant publications:
Claudio L, Torres T, Sanjurjo E, Sherman L, Landrigan PJ. Environmental health sciences education-A tool for achieving environmental equity and protecting our children. Environ Health Perspect 1998; 106:849-855.
Asthma in American Children. Congressional Staff Briefing: Asthma and the Environment: Protecting our Children [Landrigan PJ]. 1-4 (1999).
Roy A, Sheffield PE, Wong K, Trasande L. Economic consequences of subchronic air pollutant exposure for pediatric asthma hospitalizations. Pediatric Academic Societies Meeting; May 2010.
Trasande L, Thurston GD. The role of air pollution in asthma and other pediatric morbidities. J Allergy Clin Immunol 2005; 115(4):689-699.
7. What kinds of technology and infrastructure do they rely on in the production of environmental health care?
The CEHC has a synergistic relationship with its parent affiliation, Mount Sinai Hospital, which utilizes and also provides data for the basis of the research undertaken by the CEHC. The CEHC also collaborates with the New York State Department of Health, which provides important records such as the history of pediatric asthma-related hospital visits in the NYC metropolitan area.
8. What social ecology does this person, group or organization work within, and how did it shape their way of conceiving and engaging asthma?
The CEHC works to improve the health of NYC children in Mount Sinai's home community of East Harlem and within all 5 boroughs of NYC. However, the CEHC's mission of research and prevention spread far beyond the borders of any one city.
9. What events or data seem to have motivated their ways of thinking about and engaging environmental health?
The CEHC's work is motivated in part by data that has shown the rise in incidence of childhood diseases that stem from negative environmental factors. Asthma alone has doubled in frequency since the 1980s and is now the leading cause of emergency room visits and hospitalizations in America. The National Academy of Sciences also determined that environmental factors contribute to 28% of developmental disorders in children. The fact that both of these diseases are preventable to a degree is clear motivation for the CEHC to identify which environmental factors are to fault and how to reduce exposure to them.
10. What funding enables their work and possibly shapes their way of thinking about environmental health?
The CEHC is supported mainly through philanthropic donations and from major research institutions such as the National Institute of Health (NIH); since its inception in 2007, the CEHC has generated over $11 million in grants. The CEHC also shares funding and resources from its parent hospital, Mount Sinai, as well as from the Icahn School of Medicine.
11. What in the history of this person, group or organization likely shaped the way they conceived or and engage environmental health?
The CEHC was formed in response to the rise of a new series of health challenges that face the children of today that stem from modern environmental factors. As focus shifts from preventing the spread of infectious diseases that plagued past generations, the CEHC hopes to prevent the environmentally-linked diseases that plague modern day America, such as Asthma, Developmental Disorders (ADHS, Autism Spectrum Disorders, and others), and Childhood leukemia, all of which have increased sharply in incidence over the past couple of decades.
12. What does this person, group or organization seem to find methodologically challenging or concerning in dealing with environmental health?
One challenge that the CEHC seems to face is applying their research on the causes of environmentally linked diseases to catalyzing real world changes that implement their findings. Without proper influence on city and state departments such as the NYS Department of Health, the CEHC's ultimate goal of preventing exposure and raising awareness of negative environmental factors may go unnoticed.
13. What kinds of governance are (implicitly or explicitly) called for in the way they think about environmental health?
The CEHC conducts research into the environmental causes of childhood disease in order to translate these findings into solutions that legislators can implement in an effort to restrict harmful emissions and ensure the safe disposal of hazardous environmental elements. The CEHC also pushes for increased awareness and promotes public education in the causes of diseases stemming from the environment.
14. How can The Asthma Files enable or supplement this way of thinking about environmental health, and the work of this person, group or organization?
The Asthma Files could provide data from other cities that the CEHC could use to supplement their research. Because each city faces unique challenges and characteristics that affect the environmental health of its inhabitants, the CEHC could use the data compiled on the Asthma Files to provide preventative medical solutions that can be implemented on a wider basis.