CEMinar: Cavin Ward-Caviness, The Interplay Between Epigenetic Aging, Neighborhood Disadvantage, and Environmental Health Risks

Cavin Ward-Caviness, PhD, computational biologist at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, whose research focuses on understanding the impact of environmental or neighborhood factors, on health and the biological pathways that link exposures and health.  Dr. Ward-Caviness will give a presentation titled: The Interplay Between Epigenetic Aging, Neighborhood Disadvantage and Environmental Health Risks

Environmental health risks–including both chemical and non-chemical–continue to be a defining feature of health for tens of millions of individuals in the United States. As we understand more about the ways in which environmental risks are disproportionately borne by underserved and minority populations combatting those risks becomes a matter of environmental justice. Additionally, social stressors and neighborhood disadvantage can directly impact health outcomes while also enhancing the negative effects of environmental exposures. Exploring biomarkers of environmental sensitivity and mechanisms by which social stressors can become embedded within the individual to influence future risks will be essential to continued gains in environmental health. In this talk we will explore relationships between accelerated aging and the environment and discuss how biomarkers of accelerated aging may be able to give clues into who is most at risk for environmental exposures as well as ideas into the mechanisms behind such risks. We will use a variety of study designs to accomplish this task showing that the interplay between aging, disadvantage and the environment is complex and in need of additional studies.