About Us

Children’s Environmental Health (CEH) is a community-oriented, research-intensive enterprise at Brown University. CEH is a recipient of a Formative Center (P20) grant, jointly funded by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS).

Our team of faculty has a broad range of basic-to-clinical skills, and is multi-institutional (Brown University, Rhode Island Hospital, Women and Infants Hospital) and multi-departmental (Obstetrics & Gynecology, Community Health, Pathology & Laboratory Medicine, Pediatrics, Sociology). Our goal is to function as a responsive center of technical and intellectual excellence that takes an interdisciplinary approach to addressing the complex molecular, mechanistic, clinical, and societal problems associated with environmental exposures that impact fetal development.

This goal will be accomplished by pursuing the following objectives:

Leadership

Providing leadership and innovation in basic and clinical research that furthers our understanding of environmental stressors and their impact on fetal development.

Research

Expanding interdisciplinary research that broadens our understanding of the health risks associated with developmental exposures and the underlying molecular mechanisms associated with disease.

Connectivity

Building bridges across fields and creating new interdisciplinary research, training, and mentoring opportunities.

Outreach

Translating basic research findings into clinical applications and effectively communicating potential health hazards to the community for the benefit of overall public health.

Our three research projects aim to develop approaches to understanding alterations induced by environmental stressors. Four cores and a Pediatric Health Specialist support our research:

• The Tissue Procurement Core and Xenotransplant Core provide vital medical technology and surgical services for carrying out the research.
• The Community Outreach and Translation Core, with the assistance of the Pediatric Health Specialist, maximizes our ability to interact with the community that we serve and to translate our research findings into practical outcomes that benefit public health.
• The Administrative Core provides the infrastructure for critical self-evaluation, administrative operations, and resource management.