CURRENT FUNDED PROJECTS
Health, Air Pollution and Population Initiative in Education and Science Training
PIs: Drs. Sara Grineski and Timothy Collins
Health, Air Pollution and Population Initiative in Education and Science Training (HAPPIEST) R25 was established at the University of Utah (UU) in 2021 with a grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences to address pressing challenges related to air pollution and health. This is because air pollution negatively affects the majority of the US population. It causes respiratory illnesses, neurological and mental health problems, and reproductive ailments. Air pollution is particularly acute in Utah’s Salt Lake Valley, where the University of Utah is located. The area’s topography produces temperature inversions in the winter, leading to stagnant conditions and poor air quality with well-documented human health effects. Between 2021-2025, the program trained undergraduate students from underrepresented backgrounds in air pollution-related health research. As of Summer 2026, HAPPIEST became open to all students no matter their background. We received a competitive renewal to fund another 5 years of student training, beginning in Summer 2027. With the renewal, the focus broadened from “air pollution and health” to “climate and health”. This is because key drivers of ongoing changes in climatic patterns—including increased temperatures, precipitation extremes, extreme weather events and disasters, sea level rise, and changing growing seasons and habitat ranges—influence a broad spectrum of health outcomes. This occurs directly through events such as extreme heat, droughts, wildfires, storm surges, and floods and indirectly through various exposure pathways, such as declining air, water and food quality/quantity; increasing infectious diseases, vector transmissions, and allergen exposures; population displacements; health care interruptions; infrastructure and supply chain disruptions; and more prevalent economic insecurity. HAPPIEST has supported CNTH graduate student as graduate student training coordinators and CNTH undergraduate students as summer trainees.
https://nexus.utah.edu/affiliates/project-happiest/index.php
Area-level Socio-economic Conditions and Individual-level Health and Mortality: Exploring Place-Based Mechanisms and Individual-level Psychosocial Processes
PI: Dr. Davis Curtis
Co-Is: Drs. Sara Grineski, Dennis Wei, and Yue Zhang
The goal of the project is to systematically document how place-based factors (including air pollution, extreme summer heat, greenspace, and built environment) drive midlife health and mortality disparities and provide valuable insights into the complex and dynamic relationships within systems of people and places. This holistic research effort will produce novel evidence to support the development of effective place-based interventions. This five-year R01 grant was funded in 2023 by the National Institute on Aging.
PAST FUNDED PROJECTS
We seek to sustain an externally funded, collaborative interdisciplinary research and student training program. Past funded projects have supported numerous students and much of our research productivity.
Examples of these projects include:
- A National Science Foundation(NSF) project analyzing environmental inequalities in human exposure to air pollution and flood hazards in Houston and Miami;
- An Environmental Protection Agency(EPA)project examining children’s vulnerability to climate change in the El Paso-Ciudad Juárez binational metro area;
- A National Institutes of Health(NIH)/EPAproject studying social and environmental determinants of respiratory health among El Paso children;
- A National Aeronautics and Space Administrationproject modeling the influence of climate change on respiratory health problems in Texas; and
- A NIH funded project implementing a suite of programs and activities through a multi-institution consortium with the aim to diversifying the biomedical science workforce in the US.
Through these projects and others, we have collaborated productively with coauthors and coinvestigators from a broad range of disciplinary backgrounds, including anthropology, biology, chemistry, computer science, criminology, economics, engineering, geology, geography, meteorology, pediatric neurology, physics, psychology, public health, sociology, and urban planning.