The Southern California Environmental Health Sciences Center (SCEHSC) has received an $8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to advance research on the health effects of environmental exposures. SCEHSC, which is based at the Keck School of Medicine of USC and has been continuously funded by NIH for more than 30 years. The center has supported research on air pollution that has been highly influential in development of regulatory standards, on extreme heat and wildfires, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and on environmental effects on cardiorespiratory health, neurodevelopment and cognitive aging, kidney, liver and metabolic disease, and diabetes. The new grant ensures the center can continue backing these and other efforts through pilot funding, service cores providing expertise in exposure assessment, study design, biostatistics and data science, community engagement, research translation and science communication, and additional resources. Central to SCEHSC’s impact is its pilot program, which provides funding and support to help investigators turn promising ideas into established research programs. The program has generated a 30-to-1 return on its investments, with pilot funding helping researchers attract additional support, primarily from NIH. The new NIH funding will also allow SCEHSC to expand its work in two new areas in environmental health: artificial intelligence (AI) and cancer. SCEHSC is also expanding its work on environmental exposures linked to cancer in children and adults, in collaboration with the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center.

A new study showed a greater prevalence of poor kidney health among young girls and women in Nicaragua than previously known, as this population is often excluded from CKDu research because they are rarely diagnosed with CKDu. Their elevated risk was also strongly associated with high body mass index levels, indicating elevated risk of metabolic kidney disease. While the researchers did identify poor kidney health among heat-exposed young males working in sugarcane fields, the majority of participants who exhibited higher poor kidney health did not work in heat-intensive environments. Both of these findings were unexpected.

For the first time, researchers were able to determine when some of Ningaloo Reef's most important corals reproduce, creating a benchmark that will help scientists track the impacts of marine heatwaves, assess reef recovery and identify opportunities for restoration.