School of Information Professor Zhe He serves as a co-investigator on an interdisciplinary team at Florida State University (FSU) that received a $1.9 million grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The research team will use the four-year grant to study the cumulative consequences of chemical and psychosocial stressors on child health through the Bioecological Center for Rural Children’s Health (BeRCH). Though these stressors are known to negatively impact human health, little is known about how they interact with each other.

“BeRCH will 1) multilaterally attend to both chemical and psychosocial stressors, 2) use transdisciplinary approaches to create new models, data streams and language to encompass insights drawing from intersectionality of disciplines, and 3) promote a participatory framework to increase community engagement and empowerment,” said Dr. He, who will work primarily on the creation of new models and data streams.

“I will work closely with other members in the BeRCH center to support research activities related to the use of Electronic Health Record (EHR) data for assessing health outcomes and provide biostatistical support with other members in the UF-FSU CTSA Biostatistics, Informatics, and Research Design (BIRD) program to support data analysis and study design for various projects,” Dr. He continued.

The interdisciplinary team is made up of 17 FSU faculty researchers, including Laurie Abbot and Jessica Bahorski (College of Nursing), Elena Reyes, Devon Graham and Ursula Weiss (College of Medicine), Ravinder Nagpal (College of Health and Human Sciences), Elizabeth Hammock (Department of Psychology), Zhe He (College of Communication and Information), Christopher Holmes and Ming Ye (Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science), Michael Killian (College of Social Work) and Joseph Schwartz (College of Criminology and Criminal Justice). For more information on the project, click here.