# The Impact of Drought on Arsenic Exposure and Cardiometabolic Outcomes in a Rural Aging Population

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO DENVER · 2023 · $586,542

## Abstract

Project Summary / Abstract
Droughts are an important natural disaster but the health implications for elderly populations in the United
States have not been extensively studied. This study seeks to provide evidence on the cardiometabolic health
risks posed by drought. Droughts can contribute to groundwater over-pumping, and this may in turn lead to
arsenic release from aquifer clays into drinking water sources. The impacts of drought on arsenic exposure
and resultant health outcomes in human populations are potentially important and this study seeks to address
that knowledge gap. We propose to conduct a retrospective cohort study using data from the San Luis Valley
Diabetes Study, as well as hydrogeological measurements of water and environmental conditions in the San
Luis Valley, to clarify relationships between drought, arsenic in water, arsenic exposure (as measured by urine
biomarker), and cardiometabolic health outcomes including incident diabetes (DM), incident cardiovascular
disease (CVD), and all-cause mortality. This work is community-engaged and includes a K12 outreach
component. Aim 1 quantifies the relationship of drought to individual arsenic exposures and thence to incident
CVD, incident DM, and mortality. Aim 2 generates a model for groundwater arsenic as a function of
hydrological predictors using machine learning approaches, and uses this to explore relationships between
drought, modeled water arsenic and the outcomes of Aim 1. Aim 3 estimates the association between
cumulative arsenic exposure and incident CVD, incident DM, and mortality, using a nested case-control design
and predictions over time of arsenic exposure from the Aim 2 model. Aim 4 is a simulation study projecting
future CVD and DM outcomes under different scenarios of drought conditions, with and without counterfactual
interventions to reduce drinking water arsenic.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10631234
- **Project number:** 5R01ES032612-03
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO DENVER
- **Principal Investigator:** Matthew O. Gribble
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2023
- **Award amount:** $586,542
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2021-08-05 → 2026-05-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10631234

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10631234, The Impact of Drought on Arsenic Exposure and Cardiometabolic Outcomes in a Rural Aging Population (5R01ES032612-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10631234. Licensed CC0.

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