2024 International Meeting of the Pacific Basin Consortium for Environment and Health - Project Summary/Abstract
The Pacific Basin Consortium for Environment and Health (PBC) will partner with Louisiana State University
Superfund Research Program (LSU SRP) investigators to develop a series of meetings on topical themes. An
alternating schedule of one-day focus meetings on hot topics and full International Conferences has been
planned from 2021 to 2026. This application (bolded below) is limited to the 2024 international meeting, but
the full plan is outlined for context.
• 2021 Focus meeting, Brisbane, Australia, Environmental impacts on infectious disease. [R13 2021]
• 2022 Conference, Jeju Island South Korea, Environmental exposures in a changing climate. [R13 2022]
• 2023 Focus meeting, Louisiana State University, USA, Pandemic planning – lessons from COVID-19.
• 2024 Conference, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Bidirectional Interactions between Climate and Health
• 2025 Focus meeting, CRI Bangkok, Thailand, Theme TBA.
• 2026 Conference, NIAID Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Theme TBA.
International meetings will be held within universities (or similar) over three and a half-days, facilitating virtual
attendance and participation, and include training workshops, plenary sessions, symposia, poster presentation
sessions, and a dedicated unopposed session for student oral presentations.
The Focus meetings and Conference themes align with the NIEHS the SRP Strategic Plan 2020-2025 and NIEHS
Strategic Goals 2018-2023, advancing environmental health sciences, promoting the translation of scientific
knowledge to action, and enhancing environmental health sciences through stewardship and support. The PBC
has a long history of working with regional Universities and Professional Societies to maximize the participation
of local trainees (students and postdoctoral fellows) and junior faculty in line with SRP goals. All PBC
Conferences have similar objectives: promoting human and environmental health through education and practice
in toxicology, engineering, and sanitation, and focusing on priority environmental health issues in the host
country. Each conference has been attended by 250-300 participants with 60% or more coming from the Asia-
Pacific region.
We request $50,000 from NIEHS to (i) facilitate conference organization, (ii) incentivize the participation of
trainees, early career researchers, and young professionals, with a particular focus on female and
underrepresented minority participation, through travel grants and registration waivers, and (iii) facilitate the
attendance of local trainees through accommodation and registration support. The meeting program costs are
estimated at $100,000. Additional support will come from the PBC, LSU, Pennington Biomedical Research
Center, and the non-profit organization for Advancing Research for Children's Environmental Health (ARCeH).
