Community Public Health
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Our researchers provide information, data, tools, and other resources to Agency program offices, states, public health officials, and other partners to support decisions and actions that advance healthy, sustainable, and prosperous communities. Working in multi-disciplinary teams that unite experts across the full spectrum of environmental, physical, public health, and other sciences, they are illuminating the complex links between our environment and community public health.
Research activities include:
- Mining large national databases to develop indicators and understand key factors and health outcomes of concern
- Quantifying exposure and risk to priority issues such as lead and radon, at the local scale
- Advancing the science of cumulative risk assessment
- Conducting Health Impact Assessment (HIA) case studies related to transportation, buildings, and other sectors.
Tribal Environmental Health Research
EPA advances Tribal Environmental Health through its Science to Achieve Results (STAR) grants program, supporting research designed to better understand the health effects of environmental contaminants on tribal populations. The STAR grants program has awarded funding in various research areas that explore such environmental risks, particularly cumulative chemical exposure and global climate change affecting tribes.
The Sustainable and Healthy Communities Research Program
Advancing community health is a major component of EPA’s Sustainable and Healthy Communities Research Program. The program takes a systems approach to integrate the full range of available data from public health, physical, natural, and social sciences, toxicology, engineering, and ecosystems research to support Agency priorities and empower communities to make scientifically informed decision.