Projects

Southern Center on Environmentally Driven Disparities in Birth Outcomes (SCEDDBO)

The Southern Center on Environmentally Driven Disparities in Birth Outcomes (SCEDDBO) is funded by the US Environmental Protection Agency. The central mission of SCEDDBO is to determine how environmental, social, and host factors jointly drive health disparities in birth outcomes.

Specific goals of the Center are:

1. To develop and operate an interdisciplinary children's health research center with a focus on understanding how biological, physiological, environmental, and social aspects of vulnerability contribute to health disparities;
2. To enhance research in children's health at Duke by promoting research interactions among programs in biomedicine, environmental health, and the social sciences and establishing an infrastructure to support and extend interdisciplinary research;
3. To develop new methodologies for incorporating innovative statistical analysis into children's environmental health research and policy practice, with a particular emphasis on genetic and spatial analysis;
4. To serve as a technical and educational resource to the local community, region, the nation, and to international agencies in the area of children's health and health disparities.

Adverse birth outcomes exhibit disparities across subpopulations. Although it is widely agreed that birth outcomes are determined by multiple forces, surprisingly little is known about the interaction of those forces and how those forces jointly drive health disparities. Elevated environmental exposures often occur in communities facing multiple social stressors, which may compound the effects of environmental exposures. This phenomenon is especially dramatic for low income and minority pregnant mothers, with significant implications for the fetuses they carry. In addition, despite the growing importance placed on gene-environment interactions, we know little about how genetic and environmental factors combine differentially to promote or prevent adverse birth outcomes across subpopulations.

Survivors of poor birth outcomes are at significant risk for neonatal, infant, and child morbidity and mortality, as well as obesity, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes in adulthood. Thus understanding, and eventually intervening, to prevent adverse birth outcomes is of critical importance to the overall health of the nation. SCEDDBO will leverage active partnerships among Duke's School of the Environment, Medical Center, Arts and Sciences, and Children's Environmental Health Initiative, as well as the Durham County Health Department, and Durham Congregations, Associations, and Neighborhoods.

For more information see the SCEDDBO EPA page.

View the EPA announcement article.

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