PROTECT and Silent Spring Institute’s Report Back App deemed a model for future research at the PEPH Conference
On Thursday, December 13th, the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) hosted a two-day conference for the Partnerships for Environmental Public Health (PEPH) Annual Meeting, where various environmental health science professionals came together to discuss the topic of reporting back research results. Members of PROTECT’s Community Engagement Core (CEC) discussed the significance of PROTECT’s continuing collaboration with the Silent Spring Institute in developing the DERBI Report Back App. The Report Back App was inaugurated on October 15th, 2018 to provide a platform for cohort participants in Puerto Rico to directly access their own confidential report as well as cohort-wide research results.
Julia Brody, director of the Silent Spring Institute, delivered the keynote address on the first day of the meeting. Her talk introduced the topic and described SSI’s recent work with the PROTECT Center on the Report Back App. CEC co-directors Phil Brown and Carmen M. Vélez Vega participated at the conference with UPR student Irene Lafarge Previdi and Katie Boronow from Silent Spring Institute, who were both key members of the Report-Back App development team. Additionally, Dr. Carmen M. Vélez Vega served on the planning committee for the event and also presented on PROTECT’s groundbreaking work on report back. Several speakers throughout the conference referenced the Silent Spring DERBI App and the corresponding Report-Back Handbook in their presentations as models for their own work.
The Environmental Factor highlighted the importance of our report back work with the Silent Spring Institute in their most recent newsletter.