The primary objective of the Environmental Health Policy Core is to conduct research on improved regulatory strategies that incorporate improved scientific understanding of vulnerable populations into environmental health policy decisions. The broad push for second generation policy reforms has moved to central stage in the following two areas: 1) innovations in the timing and types of interventions; and 2) the distributional issues raised by environmental justice concerns. It is crucial that the implications of improved scientific understanding of vulnerable populations be understood and represented in those policy debates. The primary research foci of the Core is in these two areas. The core:

• Mentors young social scientists and assists them in developing independent and collaborative research programs focused on environmental health policy, environmental justice, and/or the timing and types of policy interventions best suited to protect vulnerable populations. This includes enhanced social and scientific understanding of what constitutes human vulnerability and how to develop and implement effective environmental policy.
  
• Recruits established/senior social scientists who are working on vulnerability in related fields to address the implications of vulnerability for environmental health sciences and environmental health policy decisions.
  
• Fosters collaborative research among Center investigators.
  
• Functions as consultants to scientists from any area interested in the policy implications of research results, as well as the policy needs for scientific research.