Darryl B. Hood to lead project looking at the impact of chemical and non-chemical stressor exposures on personal health outcomes.
Darryl B. Hood, professor of environmental health sciences and Dean’s Fellow for Diversity, Equity and Inclusive Excellence.
Darryl B. Hood, professor of environmental health sciences, received a new grant from the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to support research analyzing the impact of climate change-related chemical and non-chemical stressor exposures on the health outcomes of Columbus residents.
The interdisciplinary team, which includes researchers across Ohio State and additional Ohio-based community stakeholders, was awarded $1.29 million for the three-year project. The project will focus on air contaminant monitoring via an open-sourced platform in neighborhoods identified as vulnerable census tracts on Columbus’ Near East Side and Linden. The team hopes to gain a better understanding of how underserved communities in Ohio and beyond face disparate health outcomes stemming from interactions of stressors in the built, natural, physical and social environment.
“We’re all products of where we live, where we work, where we play and where we pray,” said Hood, also the Dean’s Fellow for Diversity, Equity and Inclusive Excellence. “That in and of itself constitutes a very complex network, and we are subjected to the cumulative interactions of the nodes in that particular network.”
This work is supported through the EPA’s Science to Achieve Results (STAR) program, which funds transdisciplinary research with approaches that explore and analyze environmental problems at the intersection of climate change, environmental justice and vulnerable populations.
Building on previous work, the team will analyze connections between exposure to chemical and non-chemical stressors, increased health risks and chronic disease outcomes, which can be used to inform local policy, Hood said.
“What works in one place doesn’t necessarily work in other places. When poor people living in low socioeconomic areas, who have been subjected to the structural inequalities inherent in the fabric of our society… it’s important to address the links and associations that give rise to these outcomes,” Hood said.
