Marginalized communities in the United States and globally are more frequently exposed to multiple environmental hazards and social stressors, including racism, poverty, poor housing quality, and social inequality, all of which lead to poor health outcomes over the life course. Although environmental justice advocates and researchers have pushed decision-makers to more effectively address the cumulative impacts of these environmental and social stressors, environmental policy and regulation continue to fall short, and researchers grapple with how best to holistically characterize the health threats posed by multiple structural determinants of environmental health disparities. This talk will examine novel epidemiological and exposure assessment methods, as well as community-based participatory research approaches, such as leveraging of administrative datasets and applications of mixtures methods, to elucidate mechanisms by which environmental exposures may interact with psychosocial and other stressors to exacerbate health impacts in racialized and other socially marginalized groups. Implications of this nascent science of cumulative impacts for improving regulation and advancing environmental justice will be discussed.

PLENARY: From the cell to the street: Addressing structural determinants to advance the science of environmental justice