This year, NIEHS cooperated with a diverse group of environmental and health scientists, public health professionals, community and patient advocates, and the public to develop the 2025-2029 NIEHS Strategic Plan. This framework emphasizes key themes that drive the entire institute and provides an important roadmap to integrating the knowledge we gain through environmental health research into disease prevention strategies and interventions to promote healthier lives for all people.

Additionally, the NIEHS Strategic Plan highlights research areas that our institute will concentrate on for the next five years, including precision environmental health (PEH), which is a priority of the National Institutes of Health and the focus of this month’s Science Digest.

PEH is focused on understanding the mechanisms behind individual differences in disease susceptibility, progression, and severity, in a way that takes account of environmental exposures throughout life. A PEH approach requires integrating genome and epigenome profiles, measuring exposures at critical stages of life using the exposomics framework, informing public health, and incorporating powerful data science tools to create connections and understanding across many different types of data.

This edition of Science Digest highlights how researchers funded by the Superfund Research Program (SRP) are following a PEH approach and conducting next-generation PEH research at the intersection of “-omics” data and environmental exposures. Through their work, these scientists are moving closer to interventions that target disease at the individual level.

In our rapidly changing world, it is critical that we grow and adapt to continue protecting human health effectively. As SRP prepares to update our own strategic plan, we will use the NIEHS strategic plan and the work our grant recipients are doing as a guide to ensure that we are equipped to handle future environmental health challenges.

Warm regards,

Michelle Heacock, Ph.D.
Director
Superfund Research Program