# Maternal and Infant Environmental Health Riskscape (MIEHR) Research Center

> **NIH NIH P50** · BAYLOR COLLEGE OF MEDICINE · 2022 · $120,000

## Abstract

ABSTRACT
Climate change represents an unprecedented public health crisis world-wide with threats that are ever growing,
particularly for persons living in coastal locations. Health risks to mothers and children are a particular concern
with growing evidence of impacts of elevated temperatures on maternal and child health. Whereas relatively few
investigations have explored differential impacts of temperature among Black, Brown, and Indigenous mothers,
the evidence for racial/ethnic disparities in perinatal health is overwhelming and disturbingly long-standing.
Further, minority and low-income families experience a “double jeopardy” because of exposures to both chemical
and non-chemical stressors in multiple environments. To address these inequities, the Maternal and Infant
Environmental Health Riskscape (MIEHR) Research Center, an NIMHD/NIEHS/NICHD P50 Center of
Excellence on Environmental Health Disparities Research was established to elucidate contributions of
the biological, physical, social, and built environments of the environmental riskscape to environmental
health disparities in Black and White pregnant women and their infants. The MIEHR Center has two
synergistic research projects: Project 1: The Environmental Riskscape, Disasters and Obstetric Outcomes, an
epidemiological study to identify race-specific associations between exposures to a mixture of chemicals and
place-based stressors and preterm birth and Project 2: Disparities Aware Classifiers for Maternal and Infant
Health, a bioinformatics study to develop and validate disparity aware classifiers for preterm birth for Black and
White women. In support of both projects, we are recruiting women who present for labor and delivery at obstetric
hospitals in the Texas Medical Center (TMC), the largest medical center in the world. The TMC is in greater
Houston, which has an immensely diverse population in terms of racial/ethnic profiles as well as an economic
duality of wealth and poverty. Further, the area experiences extremely hot and humid summers and, with its
proximity to the Gulf Coast, is prone to hurricanes and flooding. By leveraging the MIEHR Center infrastructure
and building on our prior work applying distributed lag non-linear models (DLNLMs) for modeling exposures that
have non-linear and lagged effects, we propose to evaluate associations between rising temperatures and birth
weight, a perinatal outcome that increases health risks of infants throughout their life course. The Specific Aims
are to: 1) Expand the MIEHR environmental riskscape and compile time series of measurements of temperature
and other meteorological variables during pregnancy for study participants; 2) Apply DLNLMs to investigate
critical windows of exposure to temperature and birth weight; and 3) Examine whether maternal age, race, and
place-based stressors modify associations between elevated temperature and birthweight. Results will lay the
groundwork for including climate hazards as a critical element...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10671979
- **Project number:** 3P50MD015496-03S1
- **Recipient organization:** BAYLOR COLLEGE OF MEDICINE
- **Principal Investigator:** ELAINE SYMANSKI
- **Activity code:** P50 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $120,000
- **Award type:** 3
- **Project period:** 2020-07-16 → 2024-03-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10671979

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10671979, Maternal and Infant Environmental Health Riskscape (MIEHR) Research Center (3P50MD015496-03S1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-29 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10671979. Licensed CC0.

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