Welcome to Healthy Environment and Endocrine Disruption Strategies (HEEDS), a website designed by and for researchers who work on endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs). This website was meant to fill a gap in the EDC field: the lack of a scientific society to specifically coordinate EDC research activities, promote collaboration among researchers, and improve communication to stimulate data dissemination. The goal of HEEDS is to improve the impact of this scientific field on human and environmental health.
Research on EDCs and their effect on the planet and its inhabitants is more important today than ever. The EDC field also needs to communicate the results of research studies to the lay community, clinicians and policy makers.
The impact of EDCs on health is so important that we must work to develop integrated and coordinated approaches to improve the impact of EDC research.
To accomplish these goals will require that we all work more closely together. We can no longer work in silos within the EDC field and focus only on our own research.
We hope that HEEDS.ORG will be the site that you will turn to in order to find out what is going on in the field, and what resources are available to help understand the role of EDCs in disease.
We hope that HEEDS.ORG will also be the site to find out what is going on in the advocacy and nonprofit groups who are working in the EDC area to improve the health of the planet and its inhabitants.
We hope that you will consider joining our consortium.
Since our goal is to improve communication and coordination across the field, we hope that you will step up and join a focused research working group. These groups will be important to define and fill data gaps to improve the impact of EDC work on human and wildlife health.
In addition to science focused working groups, we hope to develop a group dedicated to improving mentoring in the EDC field.
Because many of you live in areas with a significant number of EDC researchers within a small geographic area, we hope you will consider forming a regional working group. The first regional group, in North Carolina is EDC-NC. EDC-NC has almost 100 members, provides webinars and a yearly workshop, and shares information on meetings, symposia, and publications. This regional group functions without any funding, just with the help of a local organizing committee and the interest of scientists in the area to improve communication and education.
If you live in an area isolated from other EDC researchers, it might be advantageous to join a group in order to have other researchers to talk to and collaborate with.
To help keep you informed about new EDC work, an update of publications will be posted on the site each week. The site will also post important news in the field as well as upcoming meetings.
HEEDS.ORG is a living document and is not complete. It needs your help. There are many areas that need your help to continue to improve their content. For example, we need your help to provide:
- updates on upcoming national and international conferences and workshops, webinars and symposia
- key papers in the EDC field
- EDC focused books and videos
- key websites and resources that focus on improving environmental health
If you find an area that should be included, send us an email and we will add it.
Thanks for your help in building and keeping this site useful to the field.
– Jerry
HEEDS.ORG is coordinated by Jerry Heindel, who retired from 30 years at NIEHS in 2017.
HEEDS.ORG has an advisory board consisting of internationally recognized experts in the EDC field (see advisory board). This board will provide oversight and scientific expertise to the website and its content to assure high quality science focus. This website arose from a brainstorming meeting of about 40 EDC focused scientists, advocates and communicators who met in December 2017.