Pervasive structural racism in environmental epidemiology

BACKGROUND

Epistemological biases in environmental epidemiology prevent the full understanding of how racism's societal impacts directly influence health outcomes. With the ability to focus on "place" and the totality of environmental exposures, environmental epidemiologists have an important opportunity to advance the field by proactively investigating the structural racist forces that drive disparities in health.

OBJECTIVE

This commentary illustrates how environmental epidemiology has ignored racism for too long. Some examples from environmental health and male infertility are used to illustrate how failing to address racism neglects the health of entire populations.

DISCUSSION

While research on environmental justice has attended to the structural sources of environmental racism, this work has not been fully integrated into the mainstream of environmental epidemiology. Epidemiology's dominant paradigm that reduces race to a mere data point avoids the social dimensions of health and thus fails to improve population health for all. Failing to include populations who are Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) in health research means researchers actually know very little about the effect of environmental contaminants on a range of population health outcomes. This commentary offers different practical solutions, such as naming racism in research, including BIPOC in leadership positions, mandating requirements for discussing "race", conducting far more holistic analyses, increasing community participation in research, and improving racism training, to address the myriad of ways in which structural racism permeates environmental epidemiology questions, methods, results and impacts.

It is currently unknown whether SARS-CoV-2 is viable in semen or whether COVID-19 damages spermatozoa

Research is needed to understand the presence of the SARS‐CoV‐2 virus in semen, sexual transmissibility, and impact on sperm quality. Several studies have examined men recovering from COVID‐19, but large‐scale community‐based testing is needed to ascertain the effects on the male reproductive tract, and the potential for prolonged transmission.

A model program for the treatment of mentally ill offenders in the community

There is a new and growing interest among community mental health providers and administrators in the area of correctional psychiatry. From a column in Psychiatric Times to committees and task forces in APA and the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, increased attention is being paid to the great need for the treatment of mentally ill offenders. In this article, we will introduce the reader to the magnitude of the correctional system and to the prevalence of mental illness in the correctional population. We will then describe several model programs designed to work with mentally disordered offenders, and outline a novel collaborative approach between a CMHC and a Probation Office designed to help mentally disordered offenders succeed in community treatment. Several barriers to treatment faced by this population will be identified, including double stigma, lack of family/social support, comorbidity, adjustment problems, and boundary issues. Case vignettes designed to illustrate key points will be included.

RJR-2403: a nicotinic agonist with CNS selectivity I. In vitro characterization

Increasing evidence for an involvement of nicotinic cholinergic systems in neurodegenerative disorders has stimulated the search for compounds with selectivity for CNS nicotinic ACh receptors (nAChRs). To this end, we have evaluated a number of nicotinic agonists for their ability to 1) bind to and up-regulate high-affinity nAChRs, 2) release [3H]-dopamine or induce 86Rb+ efflux in synaptosomes, 3) activate nAChRs in PC12 cells, 4) activate muscle-type nAChRs in human TE671/RD cells and 5) induce contraction of guinea pig ileum. Our results indicate that (E)-N-methyl-4-(3-pyridinyl)-3-butene-1-amine (RJR-2403) binds with high affinity to rat brain cortex (Ki = 26 +/- 3 nM). Functional studies show that RJR-2403 is comparable to nicotine in activating rat thalamic synaptosomes (EC50 = 732 +/- 155 nM and Emax = 91 +/- 8% for RJR-2403; EC50 = 591 +/- 120 nM and Emax = 100 +/- 25% for nicotine) but is one-tenth as potent in inducing dopamine release (EC50 = 938 +/- 172 nM and Emax = 82 +/- 5% for RJR-2403; EC50 = 100 +/- 25 nM and Emax = 100 +/- 13% for nicotine). At concentrations up to 1 mM, RJR-2403 does not significantly activate nAChRs in PC12 cells, muscle type nAChRs or muscarinic receptors. Dose-response curves for agonist-induced ileum contraction indicate that RJR-2403 is less than one-tenth as potent as nicotine with greatly reduced efficacy. RJR-2403 does not antagonize nicotine-stimulated muscle or ganglionic nAChR function (IC50 > 1 mM). Chronic exposure of M10 cells to RJR-2403 (10 microM) results in an up-regulation of high-affinity nAChRs phenomenologically similar to that seen with nicotine. These results suggest that RJR-2403 interacts with higher potency at CNS nAChR sub-types than at muscle, ganglionic or enteric nAChRs and has higher selectivity for CNS vs. muscle or ganglionic nAChRs than does nicotine.