Mission
The 20th Century has witnessed unprecedented industrialization, population explosion, and utilization of a disproportionate fraction of natural resources. In parallel, there have been exponential increases in scientific knowledge about the role of the environment in human health.  At UTMB, the Sealy Center for Environmental Health & Medicine proactively addresses issues in environmental health by striving to project future trends in research, education and working within communities to better redefine community service and clinical intervention, while consistently outlining new plans of attack in environmental health to better prepare for future challenges.

The solutions to these challenges require multidisciplinary, multidepartmental cooperation, commitment, and partnering, in which no individual, division or department either shoulders the complete burden or reaps the sole benefits of implementing this plan; thus, UTMB as a unified institution achieves overall excellence in environmental health and medicine. This will be realized through: 1) the continuation and development of state of the art Service Core Facilities, 2) the hiring of new faculty in areas of current weakness and future technologies, 3) the availability of substantial pilot project funds to encourage multi-investigator projects, leading to funded, multi-investigator collaborations (for example, Program Project Grants), 4) the continued support of predoctoral, postdoctoral and physician-investigator training in environmental health disciplines, and 5) the development of novel teaching modalities for K-16 education.

Center Description
The Sealy Center for Environmental Health and Medicine was founded in 2000 as a Center dedicated to promoting UTMB campus-wide strengths in the environmental sciences and to position UTMB to positively address statewide environmental health needs.  The Center draws support from ~46 full time, well published, funded faculty devoted to study in Asthma Pathogenesis, Bioactivation and Transport, CNS and GI Pathophysiology, Viral Potentiation of Toxicant Exposure, as well as Environmental Carcinogenesis, with research in these areas being facilitated by state-of-the-art service cores in Histopathology, Environmental Exposure, Mass Spectrometry, and Molecular Biology/Genomics.  The mission of the Center extends to interdisciplinary, multi-departmental, multi-school cooperation, commitment and partnering through pilot projects, physician-investigator training programs – both postdoctoral and pre-doctoral, support of new faculty in emerging areas or under-represented disciplines, and novel outreach modalities.  A nationally recognized Community Outreach and Education Program partners with Texas schools and community based organizations on local and statewide levels to address the environmental health questions of Southeast Texas; this extensive outreach program includes the development of K-12 curricula, public forum theater on issues of environmental justice, and an uniquely comprehensive children’s asthma outreach program which effectively aids local schools in making decisions regarding ozone levels, monitoring their indoor air quality, and promoting asthma intervention.