Rice University researchers have won a prestigious National Institutes of Health grant to build data analysis tools and analyze how exposure to mixed toxins in the environment affects a population, especially children.
The four-year $1.7 million R01 grant will allow a team led by Marie Lynn Miranda, Rice’s Howard R. Hughes Provost and a professor of statistics, to analyze the massive set of data she and her colleagues gathered for the entire state of North Carolina over more than 20 years.
The data include birth records, blood lead levels for children ages 1 to 6, air pollution, housing quality and educational system information that will provide snapshots of where children resided and when—and what they were exposed to during these periods. These details will improve the researchers’ ability to characterize environmental exposures, social stressors and residential stability.
Miranda expects an assessment of the data set using modern data architecture, statistical and machine learning methods will help reveal how exposure to environmental mixtures shaped educational outcomes for children and identify subtle impacts upon the entire population across space and time.
The Rice team believes the tools it creates will be useful for researchers around the world who model environmental effects on people, especially those in communities that face such social stressors as deteriorating housing, inadequate access to health care, under-resourced schools, high unemployment, crime and poverty.