Center for Urban Responses to Environmental Stressors - Situated in the heart of Detroit, the Center for Urban Responses to Environmental Stressors (CURES) aims to understand and mitigate the adverse health impacts of exposures to a complex array of chemical and non-chemical stressors in a postindustrial urban environment. CURES recognizes that each urban neighborhood has a unique combination of characteristics (e.g., age and condition of housing stock, locale relative to legacy and emerging pollution sources) that together create the spectrum of environmental risks that affect the incidence and severity of adverse health outcomes including preterm birth, cancer, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes. A community-engaged, transdisciplinary team science approach is essential to address the major environmental health challenges facing Detroit’s population. We have assembled a talented interdisciplinary team of established and emerging environmental health scientists who collaborate with our community partners to accomplish this work. We listen to our community partners, and their concerns inform the Center and provide direction for building our research capacity so that our research translates back to the community. CURES advances the NIEHS 2018-2023 Strategic Plan by performing research that increases environmental health science knowledge, converts “data to knowledge to action,” educates the community at risk for environmental exposures, and supports the growth of team-building and cooperation. To create a gateway to a healthy urban environment starting with Detroit, CURES’ short-term goals are to 1) strengthen CURES existing partnerships and develop new ones within the Detroit community, and in collaboration with our community partners identify environmental threats common to US urban populations and provide scientifically-based strategies to mitigate them; 2) conduct integrated mechanistic, epidemiological, and community-engaged research that addresses the consequences of urban chemical and non-chemical exposures on human health; 3) build CURES’ investigator capabilities by providing facility cores that provide state-of-the-art analytical services as well as pilot funds to explore the feasibility of new areas of study; 4) secure the long term contribution of CURES to the discipline of EHS by mentoring new and established investigators to attain their professional goals and prepare them for EHS leadership; and 5) foster environmental health awareness and connectivity throughout the Center. Our long-term goal is for CURES to be a premier Environmental Health Sciences Core Center that is focused on urban environmental health and resilience in the face of emerging and legacy environmental chemical and non-chemical stressors. CURES is optimally positioned to pursue innovative, community-engaged, team science research opportunities that have the greatest promise to deliver transformative gains in the early detection, mechanistic understanding, and prevention of environmentally-linked diseases.
