Dr. Darrah Sleeth, the Industrial Hygiene Program Director at RMCOEH, has been awarded a prestigious research grant totaling $1,551,568 over four years by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), specifically through the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS). The grant, titled "Evaluation of Report-Back Strategies for Long-term and Short-term Exposure Information in Rural Tribal Populations," represents a significant achievement in environmental health research, particularly concerning rural Native American communities.
This NIH R01 grant, part of a national initiative to develop a toolkit for reporting back environmental health research results, will support Dr. Sleeth and her team in optimizing and validating strategies for effectively communicating environmental sampling results to these communities. The research will focus on balancing real-time and delayed feedback for both acute and chronic exposure concerns, with an emphasis on how the source of information—whether the messenger, format, or timing—affects the engagement and response of rural tribal populations.
Collaborating with Dr. Sleeth on this groundbreaking work is an impressive team of experts, including Dr. Scott Collingwood (Co-Principal Investigator, UofU Dept of Pediatrics), Dr. Tabitha Benney (UofU, Dept of Political Science), Dr. Bob Wong (UofU, Dept of Internal Medicine), Dr. Kathy Sward (UofU College of Nursing), Dr. Johnnye Lewis (Univ of New Mexico), Dr. Tommy Rock (Northern Arizona Univ), Dr. Rod Handy (East Tennessee State Univ), Mr. Steve Babits (N. Arapaho Natural Resource Office, NANRO), and Mr. Dean Goggles (NANRO).
Dr. Sleeth's research aims to produce a set of validated guidelines for effectively reporting back environmental health data, with the ultimate goal of increasing community engagement in exposure-reduction activities, informing broader scientific research, and building local capacity for sustainable evaluation efforts in rural tribal populations.
This grant marks the culmination of over a decade of dedicated work by Dr. Sleeth and her collaborators. Their efforts include building and maintaining strong relationships with community partners, conducting pilot studies, and securing prior funding. The success of this grant was made possible by the contributions of many students, including RMCOEH trainees Logan Webb (MSOH-IH '20), Raquel Robello (MSOH-IH '20), Muhammad Arashid (MSOH-IH '23), and Emma Montague (MSOH-IH '24), as well as the support of the Northern Arapaho Tribal community and their Community Advisory Board, who have been integral to this work for many years.
— Charles Schuknecht
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