September Data Sharing and Reuse Seminar

Understanding the impact of the environment on human health has been challenged by our limited ability to measure and identify the full extent and diversity of causal factors, which motivates the need for open sharing and reuse of environmental health data. The impacts of the changing climate have now become an important consideration for environmental health research. The ability to find, link, and integrate biomedical and health data with a diverse range of environmental, societal, and behavioral data is needed to fully understand these impacts and to devise solutions and preventive strategies. The Climate and Health Outcomes Research Data Systems (CHORDS) project aims to support biomedical researchers in finding and using the data sets, tools, and models needed to conduct such research. The project aims to provide researchers with a catalog to identify needed resources, tools to support data processing and linkage, and training materials. The project is funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Secretary Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Trust Fund program and is coordinating its efforts with the broader NIH Climate Change and Health Initiative and its Climate Change and Health Research Coordinating Center (CAFÉ RCC).

The Climate Change and Health Research Coordinating Center (CAFÉ), a part of the NIH Climate Change and Health Initiative, aims to accelerate the translation of research on climate change and health by supporting and growing a network of researchers and community partners in a community of practice (COP). The COP encompasses more than 2,000 members who are professionally interested in climate and health, including academic researchers, health care practitioners, government agencies, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), funding agencies, community organizations, and industry partners. CAFÉ’s activities focus on convening COP members, accelerating their research through access to tools and resources, fostering communication and collaboration, and expanding participation in the multidisciplinary community. One of CAFÉ’s key goals is to develop data resources for fostering data sharing and reuse and facilitate implementation of the NIH Data Management and Sharing Policy released in January 2023. Briefly, in partnership with Harvard Dataverse, an NIH-supported generalist repository following FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable) principles, the CAFÉ Dataverse collection, was established, allowing COP members to contribute and reuse climate change health data. The CAFÉ GitHub organization was also established to provide code walkthroughs and tutorials for data processing and harmonization for climate change health data.