Charles Schmitt, Ph.D. and Danielle Braun, Ph.D. will present "Climate and Health Outcomes Research Data Systems (CHORDS)" on September 13, 2024, from 12:00 p.m.–1:00p.m. EDT.
About the Seminar
Understanding the impact of the environment on human health has been challenged by our limited ability to measure and identify the full extent and diversity of causal factors, which motivates the need for open sharing and reuse of environmental health data. The impacts of the changing climate have now become an important consideration for environmental health research. The ability to find, link, and integrate biomedical and health data with a diverse range of environmental, societal, and behavioral data is needed to fully understand these impacts and to devise solutions and preventive strategies. The Climate and Health Outcomes Research Data Systems (CHORDS) project aims to support biomedical researchers in finding and using the data sets, tools, and models needed to conduct such research. The project aims to provide researchers with a catalog to identify needed resources, tools to support data processing and linkage, and training materials. The project is funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Secretary Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Trust Fund program and is coordinating its efforts with the broader NIH Climate Change and Health Initiative and its Climate Change and Health Research Coordinating Center (CAFÉ RCC).
The Climate Change and Health Research Coordinating Center (CAFÉ), a part of the NIH Climate Change and Health Initiative, aims to accelerate the translation of research on climate change and health by supporting and growing a network of researchers and community partners in a community of practice (COP). The COP encompasses more than 2,000 members who are professionally interested in climate and health, including academic researchers, health care practitioners, government agencies, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), funding agencies, community organizations, and industry partners. CAFÉ’s activities focus on convening COP members, accelerating their research through access to tools and resources, fostering communication and collaboration, and expanding participation in the multidisciplinary community. One of CAFÉ’s key goals is to develop data resources for fostering data sharing and reuse and facilitate implementation of the NIH Data Management and Sharing Policy released in January 2023. Briefly, in partnership with Harvard Dataverse, an NIH-supported generalist repository following FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable) principles, the CAFÉ Dataverse collection, was established, allowing COP members to contribute and reuse climate change health data. The CAFÉ GitHub organization was also established to provide code walkthroughs and tutorials for data processing and harmonization for climate change health data.
About the Speakers
Dr. Charles Schmitt
is the Director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) Office of Data Science and a senior scientist in the NIEHS Division of Translational Toxicology. He focuses on developing and supporting strategies to advance the sharing and use of environmental health data. This work includes overseeing the NIEHS Chemical Effects in Biological Systems (or CEBS) data repository; chairing the Environmental Health Language Collaborative; and supporting the development of several scientific projects, applications, and databases. Prior to joining NIEHS, he served as the Chief Technology Officer at the Renaissance Computing Institute (known as RENCI), where he directed work to develop research cyberinfrastructures and data science capabilities for biomedical research, in addition to working for several years in industry in the areas of data mining, bioinformatics, and software development. He received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of North Carolina. Dr. Schmitt is the data infrastructure lead on the CHORDS project.
Dr. Danielle Braun
Danielle Braun is a principal research scientist and the Director of Data Science for Environmental and Climate Health in the Biostatistics Department at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and at the Department of Data Science at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, where she also co-leads the BayesMendel laboratory. Her research interests include data science, environmental health, causal inference, risk prediction, genetic epidemiology, measurement error, and survival analysis.
About the Seminar Series
The seminar is open to the public and registration is required each month. Individuals who need interpreting services and/or other reasonable accommodations to participate in this event should contact Janiya Peters at 301-670-4990. Requests should be made at least five days in advance of the event.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of Data Science Strategy hosts this seminar series to highlight exemplars of data sharing and reuse on the second Friday of each month at noon ET. The monthly series highlights researchers who have taken existing data and found clever ways to reuse the data or generate new findings. A different NIH institute or center will also share its data science activities each month.
