OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY
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Since 2014, our Center investigators have been reporting back research results to study participants. Reporting back research results shares data with those that helped create it, and makes sure that the research we do is transparent and actionable.
We have worked directly with community liaisons, researchers, and study participants to understand how to return data. We can detect thousands of chemicals in the environment and in humans, but often we cannot directly connect a chemical amount to a health outcome like asthma or cancer. Many of the chemicals we study do not have health or regulatory outcomes, making it difficult for us to answer the question, “what do these results mean for me?”
We are sharing some of the templates we have developed. We hope these are helpful for others that are reporting back individual data, environmental data, or even population-level data.
In 2019 we published the results of developing and evaluating a report in collaboration with community partners. For this study, participants wore silicone wristbands that were then analyzed for exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). The full report template is included in this publication, and includes a table that shows the priority PAHs detected in each sample, where it can be found in the environment, and any known health outcomes. That table can be viewed here. The full publication is listed below.
We later revised this report when working with a community group, Beyond Toxics. As part of this study, we used silicone wristbands and stationary air samplers to collect information on 64 PAHs in a residential neighborhood located next to heavy industrial use parcels. The full community concerns are well documented in this StoryMap. We worked with Beyond Toxics to amend the report to directly address community concerns. We are showing the aggregate data which was used to report back to the community. We also developed individual reports for all study participants, similar to the template we used in the 2019 publication.
We have partnered with NDRI-USA to assess exposures to PAHs in structural firefighters and reported back the individual results, again using our existing PAH template. However, given the long-standing concerns between occupational exposures and disproportionate incidence of cancer amongst firefighters, we added additional context to our results by developing an infographic detailing the results of the study, and a second infographic discussing the potential relevance of this, and similar studies, to health concerns. You can view the two infographics that supplemented our individual report-back on the following webpage.
We have further modified our PAH report working with the Fair Start pregnancy cohort at Columbia University. Aspects of the development process are encapsulated in the publication below, along with examples of how we revised the original template, using feedback from community liaisons and study participants.
Hurricane Harvey hit Houston, TX in 2017. Shortly after the flooding, we worked with an interdisciplinary team to recruit people that were impacted by flooding. People wore a silicone wristband at the time they were recruited, and then again one year later. Due to the flooding and multiple instances of toxic air emissions, we were not sure what chemicals people might be exposed to. We used an analytic method developed by Dr. Kim Anderson that looks for over 1,500 chemicals. As described in the publication below, we used focus groups to develop the report. You can see the aggregated data report below, and the publication provides more information about some of the individual report-back that was conducted, and the lessons learned to apply to future report-back.
Much of our work has been done reporting back individual chemical exposure results. However, we also characterize chemicals in the environment (air, water, soil, sediment) and report back these results to nearby communities, collaborators, and interested parties.
Lately, we have been working with the Portland Harbor Community Coalition (PHCC) to assess surface water in the Portland Harbor Superfund Site, using non-targeted analysis. Here, we were challenged by the vast number of annotated features found, and the inherent uncertainty in identifying chemicals. We met routinely with members of the PHCC and their collaborators to develop the report. The full report is linked below.