NIEHS and partners harmonize environmental health language
Researchers from NIEHS and the international environmental health sciences community have proposed the creation of the Environmental Health Language Collaborative, an effort to develop and promote harmonized language in the field.
Through a community model, the collaborative seeks to standardize vocabulary, terminologies, and statistical and modeling approaches to enhance findability, shareability, and interoperability of data. The group supports increased use of artificial intelligence and machine learning to parse the enormous quantities of data and metadata produced through research.
The collaborative includes a community of practice as a hub of information and exchange of ideas, a forum for coordination and collaboration, and the development of a platform to address needs identified in use cases. To aid the sharing and integration of environmental health sciences data across platforms, the group will take advantage of communication structures in the Research Data Alliance model. NIEHS recently hosted a workshop to help advance this initiative. (KC)
Citation: Holmgren SD, Boyles RR, Cronk RD, Duncan CG, Kwok RK, Lunn RM, Osborn KC, Thessen AE, Schmitt CP. 2021. Catalyzing knowledge-driven discovery in environmental health sciences through a community-driven harmonized language. Int J Environ Res Public Health 18(17):8985.