Over the past 50 years, investigations around the world have examined relationships between environmental contaminants such as heavy metals and persistent and non-persistent chemicals, air pollution, climate variables and a variety of health outcomes including metabolic disorders, hormonal disorders, neurodevelopment, pulmonary function, and others. There is usually a long lag period between identification of hazards and the promulgation of protective policies. However, given the vast body of evidence, the time is right to design and test pilot-scale interventions either on the sources of exposures themselves or on factors that might moderate or mediate these relationships and to evaluate best practices to translate pilot interventions to policy.

With increasing focus on the population health consequences associated with environmental risks and climate change, conceptual models positing points of intervention are being developed. Once developed , these pilot interventions need to undergo further rigorous evaluation prior to policy implementation. Implementation science, although not commonly used in Environmental Health Sciences, may provide a format for testing. The US National Institute of Environmental Health Science has defined implementation science as “methods to promote adoption and integration of evidence-based practices, interventions and policies into routine health care and public health settings to improved population health”. New methodologies which apply implementation science methods to environmental health need to be developed to hasten policy decisions, which may take decades to be fully tested and implemented.

This call for papers focuses on the use of intervention and implementation science for environmental health science problems. Papers can be theoretical, use either qualitative, quantitative or mixed methods to define, test and evaluate interventions/implementations, or describe case studies.

• Development of conceptual models linking environmental exposures to health outcomes that seek to identify points of intervention (mediators and effect moderators).
• Use of a variety of qualitative and quantitative research designs to develop and test interventions and implementation of such interventions.
• Evaluation of interventions and/or implementation strategies.
• Describe a case study of an intervention and/or implementation for an environmental exposure and health outcome.
• Address the ethical issues for interventions and/or implementations in environmental health sciences.
• Describe how data generated from intervention and implementation studies can best be communicated to policy makers.

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Frontiers in Environmental Health

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