The Gulf Coast Center for Precision Environmental Health (GC-CPEH) is seeking your help in increasing awareness of the greater Houston COVID-19 Registry (https://registry.rice.edu/covid19) established by Rice University and its partners and promoting its use among your constituents.  The GC-CPEH is a partnership between UTMB, Baylor College of Medicine, and the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston School of Public Health, which recently received designation as a National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Core Center.  We are supporting Rice University in this critical research study to provide information, data, and answers on the spread of COVID-19, who is being affected, and how.  It is a joint venture of Chambers County, Corpus Christi Nueces County Public Health District, Environmental Defense Fund, Fort Bend County Health & Human Services, Harris County Public Health Department, Houston Health Department, Montgomery County, Texas Parks & Wildlife Department, and Victoria Emergency Management. It will enable rapid communication with participants as events unfold, and through use of data science and analytics, provide real-time information to health departments and other vested stakeholders with a need for critical information, enabling them to:

• Track virus spread over time and across geography
• Measure economic and health impacts
• Anticipate healthcare needs as the pandemic unfolds
• Understand behavior in response to policy changes
• Identify popular and effective sources of information

We envision that the registry will facilitate testing for COVID-19 and give rise to future studies that will help us to understand the environmental conditions that cause considerable, and in some cases, fatal health disparities among those infected.  Participants will also be contacted periodically to provide answers to questions that will inform a greater understanding of community response to the pandemic and planning for this and future events.  

For questions about the study, you may contact Dr. Marie Lynn Miranda, the project’s lead investigator, or Rashida Callender Covid19Registry@rice.edu.  

Again, here is the link: https://registry.rice.edu/covid19