COE Receives 12th Federally Funded Center

Improving the well-​​being of mothers, infants, and chil­dren is one of the nation’s most pressing public health con­cerns. It’s so impor­tant, in fact, that the U.S. Depart­ment of Health and Human Ser­vices included maternal, infant, and child health among the pri­or­i­ties of its Healthy People 2020 ini­tia­tive, along­side cancer, dia­betes, and food safety.

Now, North­eastern is at the fore­front of solving this chal­lenge, leading a robust inter­dis­ci­pli­nary team to bol­ster health and quality of life for women and their children.

Ear­lier this month, the uni­ver­sity received a four-​​year, $2.9 mil­lion grant from the National Insti­tutes of Health…to estab­lish the Center for Research on Early Child­hood Expo­sure and Devel­op­ment in Puerto Rico.

Known as CRECE, which is Spanish for “grow,” the center will study how pol­lu­tant expo­sure and psy­choso­cial risk fac­tors impact the health and devel­op­ment of chil­dren living on the island’s heavily con­t­a­m­i­nated northern coast.

Puerto Rico is home to more than 200 haz­ardous waste sites and par­tic­u­larly high levels of air pol­lu­tion. Its preterm birth rate is among the highest in the world, climbing from 12 per­cent in the 1990s to 17 per­cent today, while the region’s chil­dren suffer dis­pro­por­tion­ately from obe­sity, autism, and asthma.

“This work will inform future inter­ven­tion, risk assess­ment, and policy-​​setting efforts for both this at-​​risk pop­u­la­tion and the U.S. as a whole,” said Akram Alshawabkeh, the grant’s prin­cipal inves­ti­gator and the George A. Snell Pro­fessor of Engi­neering at Northeastern.

The knowl­edge we gather will make a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to improving children’s health and reducing the global rate of preterm birth,”
—Alshawabkeh said.

The syn­ergy between two centers

The research—which dove­tails with Northeastern’s focus on solving global chal­lenges in health—will leverage the ongoing work that is being done by university’s Puerto Rico Test­site for Exploring Con­t­a­m­i­na­tion Threats Center.

Founded in 2010, the PROTECT Center has received $23.5 mil­lion from the NIH’s National Insti­tute of Envi­ron­mental Health Sci­ences’ Super­fund Research Pro­gram to con­duct an inter­dis­ci­pli­nary inves­ti­ga­tion into the com­plex rela­tion­ship between ground­water con­t­a­m­i­na­tion and the island’s extremely high preterm birth rate.

Both centers—which include North­eastern, the Uni­ver­sity of Michigan, the Uni­ver­sity of Georgia, and the Uni­ver­sity of Puerto Rico—are co-​​directed by Alshawabkeh, a geoen­vi­ron­mental engi­neering expert, and Jose F. Cordero, the Patel Dis­tin­guished Pro­fessor in Public Health at the Uni­ver­sity of Georgia. The cen­ters also include col­lab­o­ra­tions with Earth­Soft Inc., an envi­ron­mental data man­age­ment com­pany, and the Silent Spring Insti­tute, a non­profit ded­i­cated to breaking the links between envi­ron­mental chem­i­cals and women’s health.

“CRECE rep­re­sents a mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary effort with the poten­tial for tremen­dous impact on our under­standing of how human health is impacted by these chem­i­cals and what can be done to pro­tect exposed chil­dren,” said Nadine Aubry, dean of the Col­lege of Engi­neering. “We are proud to have been chosen to lead a second NIEHS center, which is a strong recog­ni­tion of our lead­er­ship in envi­ron­mental health, and con­fi­dent that like PROTECT, CRECE will serve as an inspi­ra­tional model for others seeking to per­form inter­dis­ci­pli­nary research and help solve the grand chal­lenges of our time.”

The CRECE research team will mea­sure pol­lu­tion levels; con­duct mental health assess­ments; eval­uate parental ques­tion­naires; and ana­lyze air, water, and urine samples.

The inter­dis­ci­pli­nary approach

Over the past five years, the PROTECT team has fol­lowed a cohort of 800 preg­nant Puerto Rican women through child­birth, exploring whether expo­sure to com­monly found envi­ron­mental con­t­a­m­i­nants and chem­i­cals has con­tributed to the island’s high preterm birth rate.

The find­ings revealed exten­sive ground­water con­t­a­m­i­na­tion and ele­vated levels of sus­pect chem­i­cals in the cohort’s par­tic­i­pants. They also iden­ti­fied poten­tial mech­a­nisms by which chem­i­cals can stim­u­late preterm birth, the second leading cause of death world­wide in chil­dren under the age of 5.

The CRECE team will build on this work, tracking from birth to age 4 a cohort of 600 chil­dren whose pre­natal expo­sure was doc­u­mented in the PROTECT study.

The researchers will inves­ti­gate how expo­sure to mul­tiple pol­lu­tants impacts child health and devel­op­ment as well as how other fac­tors, including socioe­co­nomic status, maternal stress, and preterm birth, might modify the effects of these expo­sures. Specif­i­cally, they will mea­sure pol­lu­tion levels; con­duct mental health assess­ments; eval­uate parental ques­tion­naires; and ana­lyze air, water, and urine samples.

“This study,” Alshawabkeh explained, “will incor­po­rate the totality of the envi­ron­ment to describe how psy­choso­cial, air quality, water quality, product use, and per­sonal expo­sures con­tribute to the health and devel­op­ment of children.”

In addi­tion to Alshawabkeh, five North­eastern fac­ulty mem­bers will par­tic­i­pate in the study.

• Helen Suh, for example, a professor in the Department of Health Sciences with expertise in air pollution’s health effects, will investigate the link between prenatal exposure to air pollution and adverse birth outcomes.
• April Gu, for her part, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering whose scholarship focuses on biotechnologies and water quality monitoring, will use a “toxicogenomics-based” approach she developed to examine the pathways by which exposure to a mixture of pollutants or particle matter might affect child health and development.
• Phil Brown, the University Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Health Sciences who studies community response to toxic waste-induced disease, will lead the project’s community outreach program.

And they’re not alone. In all, the CRECE team com­prises an inter­dis­ci­pli­nary group of engi­neers, envi­ron­mental epi­demi­ol­o­gists, social workers, soci­ol­o­gists, bio­sta­tis­ti­cians, tox­i­col­o­gists, pedi­a­tri­cians, and com­mu­ni­ca­tion neu­ro­sci­en­tists. “When addressing a global chal­lenge like envi­ron­mental con­t­a­m­i­na­tion and human health,” Alshawabkeh explained, “it is cru­cial to inte­grate knowl­edge from a variety of fields, to bring together dif­ferent exper­tise in a uni­fied approach.”

Com­mu­nity outreach

The project’s com­mu­nity out­reach pro­gram will con­vene res­i­dents, researchers, gov­ern­ment agen­cies, and com­mu­nity orga­ni­za­tions to improve the com­mu­ni­ca­tion and prac­tice of children’s envi­ron­mental health in Puerto Rico.

The plan will include an inno­v­a­tive “report-​​back” strategy, which Brown designed in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Silent Spring Insti­tute to ensure par­ents of par­tic­i­pants receive—and understand—their indi­vidual data. It will also include devel­oping envi­ron­mental health edu­ca­tion pro­grams for the island’s res­i­dents; expanding rela­tion­ships with public health com­mu­ni­ties; and coor­di­nating learning oppor­tu­ni­ties aimed at building capacity among health­care professionals.

“We’ve devel­oped a strong rela­tion­ship with the com­mu­nity,” Alshawabkeh said. “One of our goals is to pro­mote the sharing of knowl­edge and results across the center and with stakeholders.”