Gateway Exposome Coordinating Center (GECC) For AD/ADRD Research - We propose a coordinating center that brings together experts from multiple disciplines to identify exposome research priorities, develop harmonized exposome measures, and establish guidance for the use of exposome data to better understand the impact of exposome on health over the life course, including AD/ADRD risk and resilience. Leveraging and building upon the expertise gained from the successful development and expansion of the Gateway to Global Aging Data platform, we will establish a research coordinating center, the Gateway Exposome Coordinating Center (GECC). Given the wide range of exposures that occur over the life course, there is a critical need to facilitate discussions, engagements, and collaborations between researchers across many disciplines to create a central source of measures, guidance, and tools for the scientific community. The GECC will build consensus among experts around six key, interconnected domains: Extreme Weather Environment (e.g., heat), Physical Environment (e.g., greenspace), Social Environment (e.g., family, workplace), Policy Environment (e.g., smoking restrictions in public spaces), Community Services Environment (e.g., emergency services), and Life Experiences (e.g., unemployment, divorce). The GECC will serve as a centralized hub for identifying and setting priorities, reaching consensus, and establishing guidance on accessing, developing, harmonizing, and sharing innovative exposome measures and data for the broader research community. We will do this by (1) identifying key experts across disciplines within each domain, (2) engaging those experts through activities aimed at identifying key exposome measures and creating consensus around their prioritization and definition and, when lacking consensus, supporting research to facilitate consensus, (3) promoting within and cross-domain engagements to inspire innovation, understanding, and creation of common measurements and collaborations, and (4) disseminating data, findings, tools, and guidance from the GECC’s activities so that they can be used by the broader research community and establish a published record of our decision-making and inform future generations of researchers. In addition to leading the development of exposure measures, the GECC will also promote and support others in developing and harmonizing exposome data, including NIA-supported infrastructure projects, center and network programs and other interested researchers and projects. This support will come through publishing detailed guidance documents, organizing capacity-building workshops, and the GECC’s pilot program. The GECC will further encourage innovations and participation from the broader scientific community through publications, research briefs, webinars, hackathons, exhibits, and social media, as well as the Center’s in-person and virtual workshops. Collectively, the activities of the GECC to establish consensus around core and innovative exposome measures and promote their harmonization and development for broad use will enable and accelerate research across disciplines of how extreme weather, physical, social, policy, and community services environments and life experiences impact health over the life course, particularly AD/ADRD risk and resilience.
