Pilot Project Recipients Year 14
How Heat, Housing, and Neighborhoods Affect Older Adults’ Daily Activity and Social Connections
Study Title: Multi-Level Heat Exposures, Mobility Patterns, and Social Connection in Community-Dwelling Older Adults
PI: Jane Chung
As summers get hotter, older adults face increasing health risks. We know extreme heat is dangerous, but we don’t understand how everyday heat exposure affects older adults’ ability to stay active and socially connected—both crucial for independence and brain health. Most research only checks outdoor temperatures, missing the indoor conditions where people actually spend much of their time. This is especially important because some residents may not have working air conditioning and may live in neighborhoods that are hotter because they lack tree shade. We will track 30 older adults for 7 days during the summer, measuring indoor and outdoor temperatures, the body’s heat response (e.g., heart rate), and neighborhood and housing characteristics (e.g., type of structure and tree canopy). We will compare these exposures to their daily movement via GPS and their reported social connections to determine whether people in hotter homes or neighborhoods move around less and become more socially isolated. Findings will identify which older adults are most at risk and what helps—whether air conditioning, better insulation, neighborhood trees, or community cooling centers. This evidence will guide housing improvements, city planning programs, and services to help older adults stay active during hot weather.
How This Advances Exposome Science: This study captures the complete heat environment older adults actually experience (indoors, outdoors, and across neighborhoods) rather than relying on weather forecasts, providing a comprehensive view of real-world environmental exposures and their impact on older adults’ activity patterns.
How Common Pesticides Affect Developing Brain Cells
Study Title: Determining the Impact of Environmental Toxicants on Human Neural Progenitors Using Machine Learning-Based Organelle Morphology Classification at Scale
PI: Fikri Birey
Pesticides are commonly used chemicals that have been associated with conditions such as autism spectrum disorder and reduced cognitive function. Children and pregnant women are especially at risk, especially those in rural agricultural communities. Most pesticide safety testing has relied on animal models that may not reflect what happens in human cells, so we don’t fully understand how they affect the developing human brain. We therefore need better tools to detect early signs of harm using human cell models. In this study, we will expose human brain cells grown in a lab to four commonly used pesticides. Following exposure to pesticides, we will take detailed pictures of the tiny structures inside each cell, such as the energy-producing compartments and the cell’s internal skeleton. These cell images will be compared to typical brain cells using machine learning, which can measure thousands of subtle differences such as changes to the size, shape, and texture. We will then test whether these visible changes affect how the cells function or malfunction. By using human cells, this work will help build a faster and more reliable way to screen the human brain for changes resulting from pesticide exposure.
How this study advances exposome science: This project creates a platform that can be used to assess how chemicals from pesticides affect human brain development by measuring biological changes at the cellular level. The results could inform risk communication, clinical monitoring, and pesticide safety standards and policies, helping protect people who are sensitive to pesticide exposure (e.g., children, pregnant women) and those who are highly exposed (agricultural workers).
Plastic and Chemical Exposure, Gut Health, and Recovery in Babies with Congenital Heart Defects
Study Title: CHIME – Congenital Heart Infant Microbiome and Early-life Exposures Study
PI: Michael P. Fundora
Each year, about 40,000 babies are born with a heart defect. Many need cardiac surgery in their first weeks of life. During their recovery, babies are exposed to plastics and chemicals through medical tubing, equipment used in their care, and the hospital environment. These exposures may disrupt the community of bacteria living in the gut, called the gut microbiome, which plays an important role in a baby’s growth and development.
The Congenital Heart Infant Microbiome and Early-life Exposure (CHIME) study will enroll 20 babies with heart defects and collect stool samples before surgery, at discharge, and at 3 months old. We will measure plastic and chemical exposures and analyze gut bacteria in each child. By comparing each baby’s own gut microbiome before and after the heart surgery, we will be able to see how hospital exposures affect recovery and growth.
This research could identify ways to reduce harmful exposures from hospital care, improve outcomes, and reduce health disparities among children that rely on intensive medical care.
How this study advances exposome science: CHIME is among the first studies to apply an exposome-based, multi-omics approach, combining environmental exposure measurements with gut microbiome profiling, to infants with heart defects. Findings will generate actionable evidence to inform safer clinical practices, reduce harmful exposures in infants with heart defects, and improve long-term health outcomes.
Understanding the link between environmental chemicals and sperm health in men residing in rural Georgia
Study Title: Sowing the Seeds of Infertility? Investigating the link between rural exposures and male reproductive health
PI: Audrey J. Gaskins
Infertility, the inability to conceive after 12 months of unprotected intercourse, impacts ~20% of couples worldwide, with up to half being due to male factors. Rural men faced with infertility are less likely to seek treatment and are severely underrepresented in male fertility research. Existing studies have documented differences in rates of successful fertility outcomes such as conception and pregnancy in rural men when compared to urban-residing men, suggesting unique environmental risk factors. This study aims to leverage a cohort of men residing in rural Georgia counties to evaluate the environmental exposures within rural communities and their impacts on male fertility. To do this, we will apply a novel method to characterize thousands of chemicals in semen. We will then evaluate the relationship of these environmental toxins with semen quality, such as sperm concentration and motility, and sperm age using a novel DNA measurement approach. Results from this study will expand our knowledge of the environmental chemicals that may be negatively impacting sperm health in a population of rural men, who are understudied and may have heightened exposure to industrial and agricultural chemicals. It will also provide guidance to reproductive-aged men on the chemicals that may negatively impact the chances of conception and pregnancy.
How this study advances exposome science: This proposal will advance exposome and environmental health research by using novel methods to identify environmental toxicants that impact sperm health. This study will help identify community-specific exposures in rural Georgia that affect male fertility, which could inform mitigation strategies to reduce the impacts from these environmental exposures.
Linking the Urban Exposome to Breast Tumor Biology in African American Women
PI: Lauren E. McCullough
Black women in the United States are more likely to develop aggressive forms of breast cancer and are more likely to die from the disease than White women. These differences cannot be explained by medical care alone. Environmental exposures, such as air pollution, chemicals in homes, and long-term stress from social conditions (e.g., discrimination), may play an important role. However, we still do not know how these exposures affect the biology (i.e., aggressiveness) of breast tumors.
This study will work with Black women in metro Atlanta who were recently diagnosed with breast cancer. Over a two-week period, we will measure environmental exposures in their daily environments, examine markers of these exposures in blood samples, and study features of their breast tumor tissue (e.g., aggressiveness and resistance to treatment). Together, these measurements will help us understand how environmental and social conditions may influence tumor behavior.
This research will identify environmental and social factors that may contribute to more aggressive breast cancer. By identifying environmental risks that affect Black women in Atlanta, this study may guide prevention strategies and help communities, researchers, and policymakers work toward healthier environments and more equitable cancer outcomes.
How this study advances exposome science: This study links multiple real-world environmental exposures, including social conditions, with biological changes in the body and the tumor, helping researchers better understand how environments influence cancer development and progression.
Improving Childhood Cancer Survival by Reducing Air Pollution
Study Title: PEdiatric Air pollution Research in Leukemia (PEARL)
PI: Michael Scheurer
Childhood leukemia cases have increased by 45% since 1975. While survival rates have improved, it remains a leading cause of death for children. We suspect that environmental factors, like air pollution, are driving this increase and causing survival gaps. In this project, we want to know: how does air quality affect specific cancer types and a child’s chance of long-term survival? We will use the addresses of childhood leukemia patients in Atlanta to estimate their exposure to fine particle air pollution (PM2.5) and other social vulnerabilities (e.g., poverty and housing) where they live. We will analyze the link between their exposure to air pollution and social vulnerabilities with different genetic subtypes of childhood leukemia and treatment outcomes. By understanding how environmental exposures affect cancer outcomes, we hope to learn how to better support vulnerable families and protect children during treatment by identifying practical solutions such as air purifiers or air conditioning, moving the focus toward things we can feasibly change in a child’s environment. This study may also provide ways to give every child a fairer shot at beating cancer, regardless of where they live.
How this project advances exposome science: This project connects measures of environmental pollutants and social factors from the exposome with genetic data to create a complete picture of how the environment influences cancer outcomes for children to inform individual and policy-level interventions.
Designing Community-Led Public Health Surveillance in Rural Areas
Study Title: From Data Extraction to Data Sovereignty: Community- Driven Public Health Surveillance
PI: Marlene Wolfe
Public health and local leaders have begun to use samples from wastewater as a way to understand community health. We can use sewage to detect the presence of bacteria and viruses (shed in urine, stool, and saliva) in the broader community, , including infectious diseases outbreaks. However, rural and remote areas have largely been left out of these programs, which are mostly used in cities with large sewer systems. Remote communities already have limited access to public health support during outbreaks. They are located far from medical systems that would diagnose and report disease, so cases of infectious diseases, such as tuberculosis and the flu, are often underestimated. Alaska Native communities are especially at risk. They experience higher rates of infectious disease than the rest of the U.S. and are extremely remote and disconnected from medical services. Monitoring wastewater with low-cost, efficient methods in these communities can help us understand how illnesses are spreading and support public health response. We will partner with Alaska Native communities to explore their needs for infectious disease monitoring and to co-design sampling and data handling methods for portable, low-cost wastewater monitoring technologies. We will do this through interviews, focus groups, and workshops with the communities. This project will empower communities to lead their own surveillance efforts and improve local access to public health data, while we learn how to best design and scale environmental public health surveillance in rural and remote settings.
How this study advances exposome science: This research will help determine the best ways to introduce wastewater surveillance into rural communities, enabling us to collect high quality information on community exposures while establishing community data ownership and management.