Organization
Tufts University School of Medicine
Mission
The mission of Tufts University School of Medicine is to promote human health. We will fulfill our mission by emphasizing rigorous fundamentals while stimulating innovation as we: educate, in a dynamic learning environment, physicians, scientists, and public health professionals to become leaders in their fields; contribute to the advancement of the sciences basic to medicine through discovery, research, scholarship, and communication, and join with our partner institutions to provide the best care to individuals and communities.
Organizational Expertise
Research
Technologies & Fuels
Not Applicable
Clean Cooking Activities
Household air pollution (HAP) associated with the use of solid cookfuels is a leading contributor to the burden of disease in underdeveloped countries. A large proportion of this burden is attributable to non-communicable diseases (NCDs) including chronic respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. Our team consists of unique combination air pollution researchers and clinicians, with skills in conducting field based research. Our research is to understand underlying exposure-response relationships for HAP exposures, chronic respiratory disease and early stage markers of cardio-vascular disease and greatly strengthen efforts to reduce the NCD burden in low-resource populations, while informing the global pool of evidence on these outcomes. Strengthening this evidence through establishing exposure-response relationships could serve to increase the momentum on ongoing/new policy efforts aimed at interventions, to reduce HAP exposures and consequently the NCD burden.
Partnership
The evidence for HAP and chronic diseases is rapidly expanding with a large base of epidemiological literature from multiple countries reporting a significant association. Perhaps the single biggest gap in the entire evidence base is the lack of direct and quantitative exposure-response relationships for chronic disease end-points. We plan to conduct research to provide such information through the use continuous exposure (PM2.5 concentrations) and outcome (lung function, chronic respiratory symptoms, blood pressure, endothelial function, arterial stiffness and carotid intima media thickness) measures. The use of such objective measurements will greatly enhance the ability to quantify the association while also enhancing the applicability of the results in various HAP settings. The integrated–exposure–responses utilized in the global burden of disease had to rely on interpolation based on quantitative exposure estimates. Our research is expected to provide direct risk estimates and contribute to important evidence to close gap in the current pool of evidence.
Regions Operating In
Northern America
Country Based In
United States
Address
136 Harrison Avenue
Boston, MA 02111
Website
Primary Point of Contact
Name: Mr. Todd Conley
Title: Senior Associate Director
Email: todd.conley@tufts.edu
Phone: 617-636-0465
Secondary Point of Contact
Name: Mr. Mohan Thanikachalam
Title: Research Assistant Professor, Tufts University School of Medicine
Email: Mohan.Thanikachalam@tufts.edu
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