# Community Engagement Core > **NIH NIH P42** · UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO HEALTH SCIS CTR · 2021 · $75,947 ## Abstract COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT CORE PROJECT SUMMARY Tribal communities throughout the West share a common problem: Metals mixtures are routinely released from thousands of abandoned uranium mines (AUMs) in short but intense rain storms and frequently strong winds, exposing the people who live nearby to uranium and other hazardous substances. We now know that these exposures increase risks of cardiovascular, renal and metabolic diseases leading to systemic immune dysfunction in some tribal populations. Since it will be at least another generation before AUMs are fully remediated under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), or Superfund, interim measures are needed to reduce exposures, lessen waste toxicity, and reduce health risks from compromised immunity. This is central purpose of the proposed University of New Mexico METALS (Metal Exposure Toxicity Assessment on Tribal Lands in the Southwest) Superfund Research Program. The Community Engagement Core (CEC) of the UNM METALS SRP will link the Pueblo of Laguna and two Navajo communities burdened by uranium wastes with UNM scientists examining ways to mitigate contaminant migration and understand how multiple-pathway exposures affect health, from the population level down to the cell where toxicity is manifest. Each of the communities is impacted by abandoned mines that represent the wide range of AUMs in the West -- from the relatively small mines on steep terrain in the mountainous Blue Gap-Tachee community of the Navajo Nation in northeastern Arizona, to the No. 1 and No. 3 highest-priority AUMs on the Navajo Nation near Gallup, NM, to the massive waste piles and pits at Jackpile- Paguate Mine, once the world’s largest open-pit mine, in west-central New Mexico. The Native people who live in close proximity to each of these sites have faced generations of chronic exposures but unable to move away because, as one Navajo woman said, “we are culturally tied to the land.” Key personnel of the CEC have already forged long-standing, respectful relationships with each of these communities, and together we have made tangible gains in risk-awareness, risk-reduction and policy changes that have elevated the mine sites and the impacted communities on tribal and federal remediation priority lists. But much more needs to be done, and the CEC will respond to the needs of the communities by: (1) developing a common language and understanding of environmental health and traditional ecological knowledge among community members and researchers through joint CEC-Training Core training programs; (2) using community-based listening sessions to document community health concerns and research needs to direct prevention/intervention strategies that reduce exposures and mitigate or prevent toxicity; and (3) communicating research results to the impacted communities, and to tribal and federal agencies, including USEPA. Our research results will not only impro... ## Key facts - **NIH application ID:** 10139041 - **Project number:** 5P42ES025589-05 - **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO HEALTH SCIS CTR - **Principal Investigator:** David Begay - **Activity code:** P42 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.) - **Funding institute:** NIH - **Fiscal year:** 2021 - **Award amount:** $75,947 - **Award type:** 5 - **Project period:** 2017-08-15 → 2022-09-19 ## Primary source NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10139041 ## Citation > US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10139041, Community Engagement Core (5P42ES025589-05). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10139041. Licensed CC0. --- *[NIH grants dataset](/datasets/nih-grants) · CC0 1.0*