The mission of the Integrated Health Science Facility Core is to provide support for investigators in NYU Langone’s Center for the Investigation of Environmental Hazards who conduct translational environmental health sciences (EHS) research. As outlined in the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) strategic goals, translation of basic research findings into clinical or public health applications is an extremely important focus of EHS, and the importance of population-based research in EHS has been increasingly recognized by the NIEHS and our center.

Center members have access to several well-defined study populations within existing epidemiologic studies, established databases and archived biological samples, and infrastructures and opportunities for new recruitment and sample collection.

We provide a bi-directional infrastructure and an interactive environment that encourages investigators to test cutting-edge hypotheses in integrated collaborative translational research on the human health effects of environmental exposures.

Core Leadership

Yu Chen, PhD, MPH, is director of the Integrated Health Science Facility Core.

Services for Center Investigators

The services we provide drive and promote translational research, including studies in environmental epidemiology, environmental health economics, intervention studies, and patient-oriented clinical research. We offer assistance in study design, questionnaire design, and institutional review board (IRB) application for environmental epidemiologic, clinical, translational, and population-based studies. We also provide standardized protocols in collection, processing, and storage of different biospecimens, and assist in health economics estimates that translate disease burden to economic impact.

In addition, we encourage the use of newly identified and existing study populations and biospecimens for studies on early detection and prevention of environmentally related disease through the following means:

• identification of appropriate and existing study populations
• temporal variability studies of biomarkers of exposures and effects, including providing well-characterized samples from the NYU Women’s Health Study
• maintenance of archived biological samples, and sample selection and pulling for pilot studies

We also provide consultations on study design for research on the association between environmental exposure and chronic disease performed in clinical settings.

Our core facilitates and supports partnerships between study investigators and communities. Based on community concerns, we support recruitment and sample collection with Community Engagement Core–partnered communities.

Contact Us

For additional information, contact Dr. Chen at yu.chen@nyulangone.org.