The National Institute of Environmental Health Services (NIEHS) renewed the longest continuous grant in its history by awarding $7 million over the next five years to the Kresge Center for Environmental Health at the School of Public Health. The grant covers years 36 to 40.

"This is remarkable continuity for a National Institutes of Health grant," said Joseph Brain, Drinker Professor of Environmental Physiology and chair of the Department of Environmental Health.

The goal of the Kresge Center is to generate new knowledge in basic science and the epidemiology of environmental disease and apply such knowledge to treatment and prevention. Established in 1958, the Center now includes 40 faculty participants. These faculty come primarily from four SPH departments: Biostatistics, Cancer Cell Biology, Environmental Health, and Epidemiology.

Core support from the long-running NIEHS is supplemented by other federal grants, and current support for environmental health research at SPH exceeds $25 million. Studies encompass the workplace, homes, air pollution, drinking water, mechanisms of injury, and responses to toxins. Accomplishments have ranged from basic discoveries about cell death to epidemiological findings that serve as a basis of current air-quality standards.