Cynthia Curl, assistant professor in the School of Allied Health Sciences Department of Community and Environmental Health, is among a team of authors whose article has been selected by the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology (ISEE) as the Best Environmental Epidemiology Paper published in 2016.
The winning article, “Association between Air Pollution and Coronary Artery Calcification within Six Metropolitan Areas in the USA (the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis and Air Pollution): A Longitudinal Cohort Study,” was published in The Lancet, volume 388 in August 2016. The article was written by lead author Joel Kaufman, interim dean of the School of Public Health at University of Washington, and nineteen academics, including Curl, at 13 universities from across the country, including Boise State, Columbia, University of California Los Angeles, and Johns Hopkins.
The article assessed the association between long-term exposure to ambient air pollution and the progression of calcium build-up in coronary arteries and common carotid artery intima-media thickness, which is the measurement of the thickness of the two innermost layers of the wall of an artery. The study observed a cohort of more than 6,500 participants over 10 years in six metropolitan areas in the United States. The study supports the case for global efforts of pollution reduction in prevention of cardiovascular diseases. It was funded by the US Environmental Protection Agency and the US National Institutes of Health.
ISEE announced the award in June after the Environmental Epidemiology Paper Committee completed a rigorous review of more than 39 papers that made the short-list this year. The award will be presented at the 2017 ISEE Annual Conference on September 24-28 in Sydney, Australia.
“The article makes an outstanding contribution to the knowledge of environmental epidemiology and was selected because of its quality, originality, importance and expected impact,” said Francine Laden, chair of the ISEE Awards Committee.