GuLF STUDY: Developing a 33,000 person cohort study in the wake of a disaster

Epidemiologic research of disasters is essential for helping to understanding the health risks and responding to the health consequences of a given disaster. While each disaster pose unique research challenges, identification of study participants, clearance of research protocols, development of data collections tools, and accurate and representative exposure assessment constitute the core tasks. The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in April 2010, released ~5 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, and raised numerous health concerns. As such, NIH and NIEHS intramural and extramural funded investigators, in partnership with workers and numerous community groups, engaged in an array of research efforts regarding the human health impacts of the oil spill including large-scale exposure assessment, toxicology research into mixtures of polycyclic aromatic compounds, seafood analyses, mental health and resiliency research, education and training, and improvements in disaster science preparedness. This session will focus on the GuLF STUDY, a longitudinal cohort of ~33,000 clean-up workers, to illustrate the challenges of timely disaster research and the strategies employed by the NIEHS to develop one the fastest and largest prospective disaster research studies in history.