An upcoming National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NAS) workshop on Understanding Pathways to a Paradigm Shift in Toxicity Testing and Decision Making is scheduled for November 20‒21, 2017. Sponsored by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), this workshop will bring together scientists, policymakers, risk assessors, and regulators to explore key factors that influence how new science is incorporated into the decision-making process. Through a Memorandum of Understanding with NIEHS, SOT has committed to “pursue collaborative efforts such as liaison communications, partnerships, and events that promote best practices associated with common interests and missions” in efforts to “improve the identification, characterization, and prevention of environmentally related disease.”
Held in Washington, DC, and webcast, the workshop will explore recent advances in the environmental health sciences—from high-throughput cell-based in vitro studies, tissue chips, to environment-wide association studies—that have led to new approaches for understanding the toxicity of chemicals in humans. These new approaches are faster, less expensive, and potentially more comparable to real-life human exposures than legacy animal toxicity testing approaches. However, many questions remain about whether—and how—to make the paradigm shift to using these new data streams as the basis for research, policy, and regulatory decisions.
Drawing on expertise from the social sciences on issues such as the type and quantity of data that is “sufficient” for decision making, and trust in decisions influenced by new data streams, participants will investigate case studies that illustrate examples of how the environmental health community has used these new approaches for decision making.
As part of the Emerging Science for Environmental Health Decisions series sponsored by NIEHS, this workshop is free and open to the public, but registration is required to attend. A link to registration and more information about the workshop can be found on the Emerging Science for Environmental Health Decisions website.
For additional information, please contact Solmaz Spence, PhD, Communications Officer, NAS, 500 Fifth Street, NW, Washington, DC 20001, sbspence@nas.edu.