A Review of the Environmental Protection Agency's Science to Achieve Results Research Program (2017) / Chapter Skim
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overall research program through planning and coordination with EPA's laboratories, offices, and centers. STAR research support consists of three main types: grants to individual investigators; larger multidisciplinary center grants, usually to groups of institutions; and a recently discontinued fellowship program, which supported master's and doctoral students.
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, the STAR program's research priorities in light of the nation's environmental challenges, and the effects of recent STAR funding trends on obtaining scientific information needed to protect public health and the environment.1 The committee's approach is detailed in Box S-1. SCIENTIFIC MERIT The committee compared STAR's procedures for priority setting, soliciting, awarding, and administering grants, with those of research programs of the California Air Resources Board, the Health Effects Institute, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science, the US Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture, the NSF Division of Earth Sciences, and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS)
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. The committee found that results of STAR-funded research are used by many different kinds of organizations, for example, in federal, state, and local government documents; in international guidelines; and in other documents of academic or nonprofit organizations, such as National Research Council reports and American Public Health Association guidelines.
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The STAR program implemented several large initiatives that address the human health effects of air pollution, such as the Particulate Matter Centers, the Clean Air Research Centers, and the Air, Climate, and Energy Centers. Studies supported by the centers showed that increased air-pollution exposure leads to a decrease in life expectancy; they include a followup of the Harvard Six Cities Study published in 2006 and a large epidemiologic study of PM2.5 exposure and mortality in 51 US cities published in 2009.
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Many former STAR fellows continued in environmental and environmental health sciences careers. Among former STAR fellows who reported on their careers' trajectory to EPA, 34% were in postdoctoral positions; 21% in teaching positions; 16% in research; 12% in the federal government; 5% in consulting firms; 4% in state, local, or tribal government; 4% in private industry; and 3% in nonprofits.
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6 FIGURE S-1 Geographic dist tribution of STAR gr rants, centers, and fe ellowships in FY 201 Yellow indicates 1-5, green 6-10, pur 14. rple 11-15, blue 16-20 and red over 20 ac 0, ctive grantees in a sta in 2014.
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The STAR fellowship program was distinctive in that it covered both environmental and environmental health research. The two other agencies that support predoctoral fellows will not fill this gap: NSF training programs do not cover environmental health effects, and NIH training programs are geared toward overall health sciences.
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It then considered how STAR has engaged the various disciplines, which range from basic sciences -- such as the earth sciences, atmospheric sciences, life sciences, ecology, and toxicology -- to applied domains, such as environmental engineering, sustainable energy, human exposure and health effects, and human behavioral studies. The committee categorized the RFAs released by STAR in 2003-2015 and the STAR research papers that it identified as having been cited more than 100 times in a Google Scholar search according to the fields of knowledge that will help to improve human health and the environment.
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CONCLUSIONS Environmental research has led to technologic advances and to policies that have resulted in enormous improvements in human health and the environment. However, many persistent environmental challenges remain, and complex challenges with unknown effects on human health and the environment are emerging.
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