Category Archives: Enrichment Core F (Community Engagement)

PROTECT Community Engagement Core (CEC) leader Carmen Vélez-Vega is featured as the Grantee Highlight in April’s NIEHS Partnership for Environmental Public Health (PEPH) Newsletter. PEPH is a network organized by the NIEHS and made up of scientists, community members, public health officials, and healthcare providers who work to increase the visibility of environmental public health […]

Over the past few months, the PROTECT Community Engagement Core (CEC) Team in Puerto Rico has created and shared educational materials and resources on environmental contaminants and their public health impacts with the cohort community through the social media campaign PROTECT Responde. One major goal of this campaign is to disseminate educational efforts through the […]

English Version PROTECT Collaborator Nancy Cardona was recently awarded the ECHO Diversity Supplement which she will use to study how phthalate exposure levels related to lifestyle factors during the gestational period effect infancy and childhood in Latina Women. Cardona will analyze PROTECT and ECHO Data alongside other aggregated sources of exposure to better understand the […]

Since December 28th of last year the island of Puerto Rico has been rattled by a series of hundreds of earthquakes, the most powerful of which occurred on January 7th in the Southwest Region where shock waves from a 6.4-magnitude earthquake were felt across the island. The massive earthquake in January caused over $3.1 billion […]

In the last few years, Puerto Rico has faced numerous catastrophic events, including the Zika virus outbreak in 2016, Hurricanes Maria and Irma in September 2017, ongoing droughts, and a series of ongoing, destructive earthquakes in 2020. Now, and like much of the US, the island is dealing with the COVID 19 epidemic.  The PROTECT Center […]

Dr. Carmen M. Vélez-Vega, co-director of the PROTECT Community Engagement Core, has been appointed to the EPA’s Children’s Health Protection Advisory Committee (CHPAC). The CHPAC consists of researchers, academics, healthcare providers, environmentalists, and members of the public who advise EPA on regulations, research initiatives, and communications regarding children’s health. The committee meets two or three […]

In order to give readers a full-perspective on the work PROTECT has been completing in Puerto Rico since the hurricanes, this article provides updates to a piece posted on this site on October 19th, 2017. Since Hurricanes Irma and Maria hit Puerto Rico in late September 2017,  the PROTECT and CRECE Centers have been very active in […]

Since Hurricanes Irma and Maria hit Puerto Rico in late September, the PROTECT and CRECE Centers have been very active in the recovery–collaborating with other groups to ensure the safety and welfare of team members, study participants, community health center partners, and members of the surrounding communities. The PROTECT and CRECE teams have research partnerships with four Federally Qualified Community Health […]

A National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) post titled, “Establishing Partnerships to Address Environmental Health Concerns for Pregnant Women and Children in Puerto Rico,” highlights the work of Carmen Vélez-Vega, Co-Leader of PROTECT’s Community Engagement Core (CEC) and CRECE’s Community Outreach and Translation Core (COTC). The piece was posted on June 21st, 2017 in […]

Since the center’s inception in 2010, PROTECT has strived to establish partnerships in Puerto Rico with study participants, the community, and the March of Dimes – networks of connection forged in an effort to positively influence the health of the community. Highlighted in this article are some of the significant community engagement steps that the […]

Several leaders of PROTECT and CRECE presented at the American Public Health Association’s Annual Conference in Denver, Colorado on the 1st and 2nd of November, 2016. The theme of this five day conference was, “Creating the Healthiest Nation: Ensuring the Right to Health,” and it brought together more than 12,000 public health professionals from around […]

On Wednesday, August 24th, PROTECT and CRECE team members in Puerto Rico met with Carmen Guerrero Pérez, the Director of the EPA’s Caribbean Environmental Protection Division–a department covering all of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. In addition to the Director, the meeting was attended by Carmen Milagros Vélez Vega (Community Engagement Core Leader […]

We are proud to announce that PROTECT has won The People’s Choice Award at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) 14th Community Involvement Training Conference, held on August 4 – 6, 2015, in Atlanta, Georgia. This dynamic conference brought together more than 450 participants from the EPA and the Agency’s partners and stakeholders who plan […]

Phil Brown, Research Translation Core Leader and Community Engagement Core Co-Leader, recently accepted an invitation to join the Scientific Advisory Panel of the Breast Cancer Fund, a leading environmental health organization. The Breast Cancer Fund’s mission is to prevent breast cancer by eliminating exposure to toxic chemicals and radiation linked to the disease.  In developing […]