Extramural Research

Workshop Re-Cap: Breakout Sessions

U.S. EPA Workshop on Research Needs for Community-Based Risk Assessment

Breakout Sessions

Underlying Topics of Interest:

Identify tools and approaches that may be applied to community-based risk assessment (CBRA).
Discuss how to incorporate community-based information into traditional U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) risk assessments.
Evaluate the research needs for CBRA.

Breakout Session Discussion Questions

Session #1:� Data Needs and Measurement Methods for Community-Based Risk Assessment

Identify tools and approaches that may be applied to conduct community-based risk assessment (CBRA).
- What is our current understanding of the contribution of community-level factors (aggregate and global measures) to individual environmental health risks? What is the joint role of individual- and community-level factors in relation to risks from exposure to environmental stressors?
- What types of publicly collected data may be available that should be mined for CBRA (e.g., health surveillance, ambient exposures, community demographics)?
- Do we know how to measure the important factors that are not available through existing databases? What methods have been used to collect community-based information on potential exposures and health outcomes? Are these methods transferable to any community?

Discuss how to incorporate community-based information into traditional U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) risk assessments.
- How can community-based information be collected (qualitatively) and/or measured (quantitatively)? How can the Agency consider and incorporate temporal and spatial considerations?
- Recognizing that EPA’s role is bounded by its regulatory mandate, are there particular factors that the Agency could measure or specific datasets that it could mine to strengthen connections between environmental conditions and vulnerability characteristics?
- How can EPA use a community-based participatory research framework to partner with communities for CBRA? What are the challenges associated with engaging community participation in gathering and interpreting data? What strategies exist for eliciting information from community members regarding environmental stressors or health priorities?

Evaluate the research needs for CBRA.
- What are the most significant data needs for CBRA?
- What are the most significant needs for measurement methods to facilitate CBRA?
- Where are the most significant gaps in our understanding of the important community-level factors for assessing individual exposures and risks?

Session #2:� The Biological Impact of Non-Chemical Stressors and Interaction with Other Environmental Exposures

Identify tools and approaches that may be applied to conduct community-based risk assessment (CBRA). (Workshop participants: We will touch on this question briefly during our breakout session. If you know of additional research programs or studies that contribute to our body of knowledge, however, please e-mail them to the facilitator [knowlton.carrie@epa.gov] before or after the workshop.)
- What data are available on the biological impact of non-chemical stressors and the associated interaction with environmental exposures?
- What models exist to help us understand the interactions of non-chemical stressors and environmental exposures?
- What techniques (i.e., measurement, modeling) can be borrowed from other disciplines to quantify the effects of non-chemical stressors?

Discuss how to incorporate community-based information into traditional U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) risk assessments.
- How can community-based participatory research frameworks be most useful for identifying important exposures and risks? What methods have been used successfully to collect community-based information regarding non-chemical health issues? Are these methods transferable to any community?
- How can community knowledge be incorporated into EPA’s risk management process?
- What is the role of community knowledge in understanding the interaction of multiple stressors?

Evaluate the research needs for CBRA.
- What are the most significant gaps in our understanding of the biological impacts of stress and interactions with environmental exposures?
- What are the important methodological gaps for incorporating non-chemical stressors into traditional EPA risk assessments? How can this information be used in risk assessments?

Session #3:� Statistical and Mathematical Modeling for Community-Based Risk Assessment

Identify tools and approaches that may be applied to community-based risk assessment (CBRA).
- What are the data analyses and exposure/risk modeling issues specific to CBRA (e.g., how to structure models to conduct multifactorial analyses required to address CBRA; how to deal with the combinatorial challenges posed by high-dimensional data; how to effectively and efficiently combine disparate types of data having varied temporal and spatial scales)?
- What types of tools are available to model the interaction of multiple stressors over relevant temporal and spatial dimensions?
- Are there computational tools and techniques from other disciplines that we could apply?

Discuss how to incorporate community-based information into traditional U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) risk assessments.
- Currently, what are the best statistical and mathematical modeling approaches for incorporating community-generated information into community-scale risk assessments?
- How generalizable are models fitted to particular communities? What types of models can be developed and applied generally to address CBRA? What aspects of the models and/or data analyses need to be tailored on a community-specific basis?
- How can community-generated quantitative and qualitative information be analyzed to support community-based and EPA decision-making when calculations of risk are not possible?
- How can statistical and mathematical modeling be made transparent to community members? How can the results from statistical and mathematical models be used to communicate concepts of risk and uncertainty to the broader community?

Evaluate the research needs for CBRA.
- What are the important research needs associated with the development and application of computational tools for incorporating community-level information into exposure and risk models?
- What are the important gaps in our understanding of how to combine disparate types of data to characterize multifactorial exposures and risks?
- What are the most significant research needs for the development and application of databases, computational approaches, and modeling tools to facilitate CBRA?
- How can we use community-based participatory research frameworks to partner and cooperate with communities regarding statistical and mathematical modeling for CBRA?