Background Responses to various disasters and emerging threats including the World Trade Center attack, Gulf Oil Spill, Superstorm Sandy, and the Ebola outbreak have revealed the dire need for improved ability to perform rapid data collection and research for such events. As such, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Disaster Research Response Program (DR2) was created to build and promote tools, processes, and relationships to collect vital exposure and health information in response to environmental disasters. Additionally, the advent of new personal exposure monitoring devices such as "wristband samplers" is opening new frontiers for research, including community-engagement and citizen science in response to disasters. Objectives Facilitate understanding of the current gaps in critical human health and exposure data needed to inform risk assessment and and applied public for disasters and other emerging threats. Provide information regarding newly evolving programs, tools, and exposure assessment strategies to enhance rapid data collection for time-critical responses. Strengthen awareness of the efforts and challenges associated with the implementation worker and community data collection and environmental data management. Methods The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) intramural and extramural research responses to situations such as the Gulf Oil Spill, hydraulic fracturing, ebola epidemic, and other events will be used to highlight various efforts to implement timely health and exposure data collection, including the use of mobile devices, portable samplers, and the inclusion of citizen science. Additionally, NIEHS reviewed hundreds of articles and websites related to disasters to identify and make publicly available data collection tools for use by the research community. For identified tools, metadata was also developed to help researchers review and understand the utility of the various tools for differing situations. Results The NIEHS program has created a publicly accessible repository of over 165 questionnaires and data tools used in past disasters for use in future situations. Additionally, a novel human subject reviewed protocol that can be rapidly used for future disaster situations has been developed. This protocol also includes the ability to perform medical testing and the collection of exposure data, including, biospecimens. Large-scale tabletop exercises and new networks linking academia, public health officials, and impacted communities have also been created to test initiatives and to implement enhanced environmental health and exposure research in response to emergencies. As such, the research community is now poised to begin moving into a new era of "strategic science" as part of disaster response efforts.
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