The EPA National Student Services Contract has an immediate opening for a part-time (10-20 hours per week) Human Health and Exposure Pre-Doc position with the Office of Research and Development at the EPA facility in Chapel Hill, NC.

The Office of Research and Development at the EPA supports high-quality research to improve the scientific basis for decisions on national environmental issues and help EPA achieve its environmental goals. Research is conducted in a broad range of environmental areas by scientists in EPA laboratories and at universities across the country.

What the EPA project is about

The Center for Public Health and Environmental Assessment (CPHEA) provides the science needed to understand the complex interrelationship between people and nature in support of assessments and policy to protect human health and ecological integrity.  Within CPHEA, the Public Health and Environmental Systems Division (PHESD) focuses on the interrelationships between people and their environment, promotes human health and well-being, and fosters healthy and safe communities. 

Part of the work done within PHESD focuses on the adverse public health impacts of environmental exposures. The research utilizes human subjects data and publicly available databases to investigate the human health effects of air and water pollutants and other environmental exposures. Researchers have created an Environmental Quality Index (EQI) for all counties across the U.S. for the time period 2000-2005. Five environmental domains were created: air, water, land, sociodemographic and built. The researchers are currently updating the index for 2006-2010 and also exploring different spatial aggregations (e.g., census tract, neighborhood). The researchers have used the EQI as an exposure metric in health outcome research utilizing health databases with millions of records.

What experience and skills will you gain?

As a team member, you will assist an EPA researcher with analytical, management and administrative responsibilities and communication responsibilities required to support and maintain a robust research program, including the administration and management of large geospatial data sets.

How you will apply your skills

Analytical responsibilities

• Developing geospatial datasets of ambient environmental exposures;
• Extracting large publicly available datasets to investigate environmental ecological conditions, goods, and services and adverse health outcomes;
• Using large geospatial datasets to map, analyze, present in relation to environmental exposures linking with health data; and
• Developing and running code for geospatial and statistical analyses.

Management and administrative responsibilities

• Extracting, cleaning, linking, merging, documenting and managing large complex geospatial databases from both environmental quality (e.g., EPA air quality system, Safe Drinking Water Information System, Toxic Release Inventory) and health data (e.g., National Center for Health Statistics natality and linked birth certificate/infant death certificate databases, National Birth Defects Prevention Network data, mortality data) platforms;
• Organizing electronic and hardcopy geospatial records and files;
• Researching and summarizing information relating to the spatial implications with environmental quality and health outcomes; and
• Maintaining records of meetings, correspondence, and action documents, and maintain a system to track projects in progress.

Communications responsibilities

• Assisting in the logistics and coordination activities for briefings, meetings, workshops, and other collaborative efforts;
• Assisting the team in developing oral presentations results and impacts using graphics and other interactive formats;
• Assisting in developing summary analysis documents of results and impacts from geospatial data analyses;
• Assisting in writing study results in manuscripts, presentations, and fact sheets; and
• Creating abstracts for scientific meetings and presenting work at meetings.