# Integrated Health Sciences Facility Core

> **NIH NIH P30** · BAYLOR COLLEGE OF MEDICINE · 2020 · $156,555

## Abstract

ABSTRACT: INTEGRATED HEALTH SCIENCES FACILITY CORE
The Houston-Galveston area is home to over a dozen Superfund sites, and a hub for the petrochemical industry
with 500 chemical plants, 10 refineries and >6000 miles of oil, gas and chemical pipelines in what has become
the country’s largest energy corridor. The area is also home to the largest medical center in the world, the Texas
Medical Center. Thus, both the need and size of the opportunity, for an NIEHS Environmental Health Sciences
(EHS) Core Center (EHS-CC) in this region is great. As the EHS-CC for the Texas Medical Center, the Gulf
Coast Center for Precision Environmental Health (GC-CPEH) will be the focal point and catalyst for impactful
EHS research, bi-directional communication with local communities and stakeholders, and the engine driving
translation of precision environmental health research advances to improve human health. The Integrated
Health Sciences Facility Core (IHSFC) was developed to provide Center members with support to conduct
impactful translational environmental health sciences (EHS) research by leveraging unique resources and
community partnerships across the three GC-CPEH parent institutions: Baylor College of Medicine (BCM),
UTHealth School of Public Health (UTH-SPH), and University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB). The guiding
Vision for the IHSFC is to facilitate forward and reverse translation of members’ research to promote health and
reduce susceptibility to environmentally-related adverse health outcomes. The primary Goal is to provide
seamless access to expertise and capabilities for translation of GC-CPEH members’ research in the basic
sciences into human population studies, and facilitate “reverse translation” of findings from human-population
based and clinical studies into new hypothesis-driven laboratory research. To achieve this Goal, the IHSFC will
use “Translational Navigators” to connect GC-CPEH Members to IHSFC expertise and services and
promote translational environmental health research of the Thematic Focus Areas of the Center: Early Life
Genetic and Epigenetic Environment (GE2) Interactions; Disaster Research Response (DR2); and Identification
of Mechanisms of, and Interventions for, Human Environmental Disease (MIHED). IHSFC components include:
1) Population Sciences; 2) Clinical Sciences: 3) Exposure Assessment; 4) Biomarkers and 5) Community
Engagement. These components are supported by diverse and unique resources across the GC-CPEH,
including a Mobile Clinical Research Unit, Environmental Health Service Clinics, Biorepositories, a Biomedical
Geospatial Modeling Analytics Facility and Analytical Laboratories for environmental and biomarker assessment.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9928951
- **Project number:** 5P30ES030285-02
- **Recipient organization:** BAYLOR COLLEGE OF MEDICINE
- **Principal Investigator:** ELAINE SYMANSKI
- **Activity code:** P30 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $156,555
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** — → —

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9928951

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9928951, Integrated Health Sciences Facility Core (5P30ES030285-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9928951. Licensed CC0.

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