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In September 2000, the Pew Environmental Health Commission issued a report entitled “America’s Environmental Health Gap: Why the Country Needs a Nationwide Health Tracking Network.” In this report, the Commission documented that the existing environmental health systems were inadequate and fragmented and recommended a “Nationwide Health Tracking Network for disease and exposures.” In response to the report, Congress appropriated funds in the fiscal year 2002’s budget for the CDC to address this issue. What is Environmental Public Health Tracking? Environmental Public Health Tracking (Tracking) is the integrated surveillance of health, exposure, and hazard information and data from a variety of national, state, and local sources. These systems are critical in preventing and controlling disease in populations. Having accurate and timely tracking data permits public health authorities to determine temporal and spatial trends in disease and potential environmental exposures, identify populations most affected, and develop and assess the effectiveness of policy and environmental public health interventions. Tracking involves the utilization of data and information regarding health outcomes, environmental hazards, and human exposures, or a combination of them, and provides important information for public health practice. The availability of these types of data in a standardized network will enable researchers, public health authorities, healthcare practitioners, and the public to have a better understanding about the possible associations between the environment and adverse health effects. What is the National Tracking Network? A key characteristic of Tracking is the emphasis on data integration across health, human exposure, and hazard information systems. The National Tracking Network (Tracking Network) provides the United States with standardized data from multiple health, exposure, and hazard information systems that includes linka

Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) in collaboration with the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has maintained a long-standing relationship in the development and advancement of the Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Unit (PEHSU) Program, through ongoing cooperative agreements initiated by ATSDR. The PEHSU serves health professionals, community organizations, governmental officials, federal staff, child-care providers, parents, and others having interest in environmental conditions that influence reproductive and pediatric health. Primary focuses of the PEHSU are to: (1) Build the capacity of primary care clinicians to recognize environmental exposure risks, provide risk reduction counseling, and deliver patient care to those at risk of or harm from acute or chronic exposures to hazardous substances in the environment. (2) Integrate environmental health content, placing emphasis on hazardous substances in the environment and related health effects, into pre-service clinical (i.e., medical, nursing, and allied health) course work; and primary care residency programs (i.e., clinicians in pediatrics, family medicine, and obstetrics and gynecology). (3) Increase patient and population awareness of environmental exposure risks and ways to reduce those risks. (4) Provide education and consultative services to community members, clinicians, state and local health departments, appropriate federal programs, and others involved in protecting children and couples of reproductive age from environmental threats. (5) Provide educational and consultative assistance in communities where ATSDR and/or Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are addressing environmental contamination.

SUMMARY OF WORK: The non-federal entity will perform the required program support to: (1) provide technical assistance and support related to the successful completion of National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and Environmental Condition of Property (ECP) documentation for integrated and interdisciplinary environmental planning; (2) support the installation in the proper disclosure technical environmental information to the public; and (3) enhance government environmental planning and decision making during the NEPA process by supporting the collection and analysis of technical environmental information related to scoping, alternative analysis, and direct, indirect, and cumulative environmental impacts. BACKGROUND: Fort Leonard Wood currently consists of 61,410 acres and is designated as an active Installation Management Command (IMCOM) installation. Fort Leonard Wood is located just south of Waynesville and St. Robert, in Pulaski County, Missouri located in the northern Ozark Highland region of south-central Missouri. The installation encompasses 61,000 acres of primarily upland oak-hickory forest, 19/25 miles of permanent/intermittent streams, and 240 acres of impoundments that support an abundance of terrestrial and aquatic flora and fauna, including sensitive species. ELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENTS: All responsible, non-federal entities submitting funding requests that meet the requirements in the scope of work will be considered for this funding opportunity. STATUTORY AUTHORITY: Title 16 U.S.C. Section 670c-1 provides, in part, that "[t]he Secretary of a military department may enter into cooperative agreements…with nongovernmental organizations" for the purposes of "[t]he maintenance and improvement of natural resources on, or to benefit natural and historic research on, military installations and State-owned National Guard installations."

The NIEHS is establishing an infrastructure, the Human Health Exposure Analysis Resource (HHEAR) as a continuation of the Children's Health Exposure Analysis Resource (CHEAR). The goal of this consortium is to provide the research community access to laboratory and statistical analyses to add or expand the inclusion of environmental exposures in their research and to make that data publicly available as a means to improve our knowledge of the comprehensive effects of environmental exposures on human health throughout the life course. This FOA solicits Laboratories (Lab Hubs) providing a comprehensive suite of analysis of environmental exposures in samples such as dust, soil, and drinking water related to the immediate environment of individuals and linked to health endpoints. Each Hub will incorporate a developmental core to develop novel measures for environmental samples, expanding the number of current, commonly measured analytes, and developing new methods for detecting analytes in other environmental samples and providing additional insight into the sources of exposures that influence human health. The Environmental Monitoring Lab will also serve as a 'clearinghouse for evaluation and provision of emerging tools and technologies for personal exposure assessment to the client community.

The Environmental Justice Small Grants (EJSG) Program provides funding directly to community-based organizations for projects that help residents of underserved communities understand and address local environmental and public health issues. For purposes of this announcement, the term "underserved community" refers to a community with environmental justice concerns and/or vulnerable populations, including minority, low income, rural, tribal, indigenous, and homeless populations that may be disproportionately impacted by environmental harms and risks. In general, the EJSG program awards grants that support community-driven projects designed to engage, educate, and empower communities to better understand local environmental and public health issues and develop strategies for addressing those issues, building consensus in the community, and setting community priorities. Community-driven projects are projects that include activities where community residents and/or representatives are integrally involved in the thinking behind and execution of those activities. Therefore, applying organizations should have a direct connection to the underserved community impacted by environmental harms and risks.

In September 2000, the Pew Environmental Health Commission issued a report entitled America’s Environmental Health Gap: Why the Country Needs a Nationwide Health Tracking Network. In this report, the Commission documented that the existing environmental health systems were inadequate and fragmented and recommended a “Nationwide Health Tracking Network for disease and exposures.” In response to the report, Congress appropriated funds in the fiscal year 2002’s budget for the CDC to establish National Environmental Public Health Tracking Program and Tracking Network and has appropriated funds each year thereafter to continue this effort. Environmental Public Health Tracking Network (Tracking Network) is the integrated surveillance of health, exposure, and hazard information and data from a variety of national, state, and local sources. The Tracking Network is unique in that it provides the United States with accurate and timely standardized data and supports ongoing efforts within the public health and environmental sectors to improve data collection, accessibility, and dissemination as well as analytic and response capacity. Data that were previously collected for different purposes and stored in separate systems are now available in a nationally standardized format allowing programs to begin bridging the gap between health and the environment.

Environmental Public Health Tracking Network (Tracking Network) is the integrated surveillance of health, exposure, and hazard information and data from a variety of national, state, and local sources. The Tracking Network is unique in that it provides the United States with accurate and timely standardized data and supports ongoing efforts within the public health and environmental sectors to improve data collection, accessibility, and dissemination as well as analytic and response capacity. Data that were previously collected for different purposes and stored in separate systems are now available in a nationally standardized format allowing programs to begin bridging the gap between health and the environment. Having accurate and timely tracking data enables public health authorities to determine temporal and spatial trends in disease and potential environmental exposures, identify populations most affected, and develop and assess the environmental public health policies and interventions aimed at reducing or eliminating diseases associated with environmental factors. The availability of these types of data in a standardized network provide researchers, public health authorities, healthcare practitioners, and the public to have a better understanding about the possible associations between the environment and adverse health effects, and to assist them with decision making. The approach of this NOFO is to assist in addressing the above mentioned data issues by facilitating access to existing statewide electronic hospital discharge and emergency department data and reducing barriers to access this data.

The Centers of Excellence on Environmental Health Disparities (EHD) research program is a collaborative effort supported by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD), the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that encourages basic, biological, clinical, epidemiological, behavioral and/or social scientific investigations of disease conditions that are known to be a significant burden in low socioeconomic and health disparate populations. The centers define environmental health disparities as inequities in illnesses that are mediated by disproportionate exposures associated with the social, natural and built environments. The kick-off meeting will feature presentations from each of the five funded centers highlighting their proposed research.

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) invites grant applications for Environmental Health Sciences Core Centers (EHS CC).  As intellectual hubs for environmental health research, the EHS CC is expected to be the thought leaders for the field and advance the goals of the NIEHS Strategic Plan (http://www.niehs.nih.gov/about/strategicplan/). The Core Centers provide critical research infrastructure, shared facilities, services and /or resources, to groups of investigators conducting environmental health sciences research.  An EHS CC enables researchers to conduct their independently-funded individual and/or collaborative research projects more efficiently and/or more effectively. The broad overall goal of an EHS CC is to identify and capitalize on emerging issues that advance improving the understanding of the relationships among environmental exposures, human biology, and disease.  The EHS CC supports community engagement and translational research as key approaches to improving public health. 

The NIEHS and partnering Institutes and Centers are establishing an infrastructure, the Human Health Exposure Analysis Resource (HHEAR) as a continuation of the Children's Health Exposure Analysis Resource (CHEAR). The goal of this consortium is to provide the research community access to laboratory and statistical analyses to add or expand the inclusion of environmental exposures in their research and to make that data publicly available as a means to improve our knowledge of the comprehensive effects of environmental exposures on human health throughout the life course. This FOA solicits Laboratories (Lab Hubs) that can provide comprehensive measurement of the exposome using untargeted approaches (such as metabolomics using libraries enriched for environmental exposure biomarkers) for biological samples derived from extant or ongoing human health studies in the NIH extramural research community. Each Hub will incorporate an administrative core and a developmental core to improve the ability of untargeted platform to detect a wide range of environmental exposures and endogenous changes in response to environmental influences in a variety of biological matrices.

The U.S. Department of State's Bureau of East Asia Pacific Affairs (EAP) announces an open competition for an environmental award of up to 246,850 to support a local and regional small-scale public health project in the Lower Mekong countries of Southeast Asia. Under the Lower Mekong Initiative (LMI) EAP and the Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs (OES) work together to improve human health thereby promoting economic growth throughout the region. Guided by the specific objectives from the LMI 2016-2020 Master Plan of Action, this project seeks to combat Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) through the development of National AMR Resistance Action Plans. In addition to demonstrating expert knowledge of health challenges, existing programs, and topics related to AMR in the Lower Mekong Region, project applications should address three or more of the following environmental areas of focus: * National AMR programs * Antimicrobial resistance * Public Health: infectious diseases and/or Antimicrobial resistance * Sustainable economic development * Adaptation to changing public health conditions, e.g., endemic and epidemic pathogens * Supporting the One Health Initiative by improving the understanding of disease ecology and the connectedness between human health and the larger ecosystem, strengthening surveillance systems, and bolstering national communication across animal, human, and environmental health sectors. * Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA) * World Health Organization's Global Action Plan on Antimicrobial Resistance * WHO's International Health Regulations. * Risk management * Evidence-based policy development * Development of new technology for application to environmental health issues Proposed project activities may take place only in following countries: Burma; Cambodia; Laos; Thailand; or Vietnam.

The Environmental Justice Small Grants (EJSG) Program provides funding for eligible applicants for projects that address local environmental and public health issues within an affected community. The EJSG Program is designed to help communities understand and address exposure to multiple environmental harms and risks. The long-term goals of the EJSG Program are to help build the capacity of communities with environmental justice concerns and to create self-sustaining, community-based partnerships that will continue to improve local environments in the future. The fiscal year 2015 program will consider proposals supporting community-based preparedness and resilience efforts (community climate resiliency). The goal is to recognize the critical role of localized efforts in helping communities shape climate change strategies to avoid, lessen, or delay the risks and impacts associated with climate change. An overarching goal of including this emphasis is to help bolster the efforts of underrepresented communities to address climate change vulnerabilities and develop solutions.

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) solicits applications for research projects in linked Hubs of Interdisciplinary Research and Training in Global Environmental and Occupational Health (GEOHealth). The overall objective of the GEOHealth program is to support the development of institutions in the Low- or Middle-Income Countries (LMICs) that will serve as regional hubs for collaborative research, data management, training, curriculum and outreach material development, and policy support around high priority local, national, and regional environmental and occupational health threats. Hubs are supported by two coordinated linked awards to 1) a LMIC institution for research and 2) a U.S. institution to coordinate research training. Together all regional hubs supported will form the GEOHealth Network, a platform for coordinated environmental and occupational health research and research training activities. An application submitted in response to this FOA for research projects must be harmonized with a linked application for related research training under RFA-TW-14-002 Hubs of Interdisciplinary Research and Training in Global Environmental and Occupational Health (GEOHealth) Research Training. This FOA is intended to support research that can only be conducted primarily in and/or by scientists of LMIC institutions.

An important aspect of Environmental Health Research is the continuing communication to the general public on exposure to factors in the ambient environment and through lifestyle habits that influence the quality of their health. This FOA is expected to facilitate developing such educational resources that will help to improve the awareness and understanding of the risks of environmental exposures and potentially to stimulate behavioral changes that promote a healthier lifestyle. This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) solicits Phase I (R41) and Fast-track (R42) Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) grant applications from small business concerns (SBCs) in collaboration with environmental science researchers to develop novel tools, activities, or materials to build environmental health literacy for a variety of groups, including community members, health care and public health professionals, educators, and students of all ages.

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) invites grant applications for Environmental Health Sciences Core Centers (EHS CC). As intellectual hubs for environmental health science research, the EHS CC is expected to be the thought leaders for the field and advance the goals of the NIEHS Strategic Plan (http://www.niehs.nih.gov/about/strategicplan/). The Core Centers provide critical research infrastructure, shared facilities, services and/or resources, to groups of investigators conducting environmental health sciences research.  An EHS CC enables researchers to conduct their independently-funded individual and/or collaborative research projects more efficiently and/or more effectively. The overall goal of an EHS CC is to identify and capitalize on emerging issues that advance improving the understanding of the relationships among environmental exposures, human biology, and disease.  The EHS CC supports community engagement and translational research as key approaches to improving public health.    

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) invites grant applications for Environmental Health Sciences Core Centers (EHS CC). As intellectual hubs for environmental health research, the EHS CC is expected to be the thought leaders for the field and advance the goals of the NIEHS Strategic Plan (http://www.niehs.nih.gov/about/strategicplan/). The Core Centers provide critical research infrastructure, shared facilities, services and/or resources, to groups of investigators conducting environmental health sciences research. An EHS CC enables researchers to conduct their independently-funded individual and/or collaborative research projects more efficiently and/or more effectively. The broad overall goal of an EHS CC is to identify and capitalize on emerging issues that advance improving the understanding of the relationships among environmental exposures, human biology, and disease. The EHS CC supports community engagement and translational research as key approaches to improving public health.

Human health is the product of both genetic susceptibility and environmental exposure.  Many studies conducted in the past, or in the field today, have not been designed to consider the full array of environmental exposures that may affect an individual's health and wellbeing.  The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) intends to promote the characterization of the exposome (including chemical, physical, and biological stressors as well as lifestyle and social environments) through the establishment of an infrastructure to enable the measurement and integration of environmental exposures.  The proposed Human Health Exposure Analysis Resource (HHEAR) builds on the success of the Children's Health Exposure Analysis Resource (CHEAR, https://CHEARprogram.org/).  The HHEAR program will continue the essential structure of CHEAR with a consortium comprised of a Coordinating Center, Data Center, and a network of Laboratory Hubs.

This notice announces the availability of funds and solicits proposals for projects that address children's environmental health risks in southern California, Arizona, New Mexico, or Texas communities located within 100 kilometers or 62 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border including but not limited to those that support prenatal environmental health education, healthy childcare education, environmental health youth summits, or pediatric environmental health training. Please Note: Communities who are impacted must be within 62 miles (100 kilometers) of the U.S. side of the U.S.-Mexico border.

This Funding Opportunity Announcement encourages applications using community-engaged research methods to investigate the potential health risks of environmental exposures of concern to the community and to implement an environmental public health action plan based on research findings. The overall goal is to support changes to prevent or reduce exposure to harmful environmental exposures and improve the health of a community.

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) encourages grant applications to support Centers of Excellence on Environmental Health Disparities Research to stimulate basic and applied research on environmental health disparities. The proposed research is expected to develop innovative approaches to understand environmentally-driven health disparities and improve access to healthy environments for vulnerable populations and communities. The proposed Centers are expected to support research efforts, mentoring, research translation and information dissemination.