eohsi news and announcements

Dr. Emily Barrett, Associate Professor of Biostatistics and Epidemiology at the Rutgers School of Public Health and resident faculty in EOHSI’s Division of Environmental and Population Health Biosciences, will lead a new NIEHS-funded study focused on how phthalates, a class of metabolism disrupting chemicals, may impact maternal body composition, metabolism, and cardiometabolic health during pregnancy and the postpartum period. The project, which is co-led by Dr. Tamarra James-Todd (Harvard University) and Dr. Susan Groth (University of Rochester), will unite two ongoing pregnancy cohorts, UPSIDE MOMS and ERGO, which together include approximately 600 women who will be followed from early pregnancy through four years postpartum. Co-investigator biostatisticians Drs. Brent Coull (Harvard) and Sally Thurston (Rochester) will use innovative statistical modeling approaches to identify sensitive windows of exposure during which phthalates most impact maternal cardiometabolic health. The results of this project will provide important knowledge about how metabolic disrupting chemicals during pregnancy and the early postpartum impact cardiometabolic trajectories, with long-term implications for women’s health.