Partnerships and Centers 

Many faculty in the Division of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Preventive Medicine are members of the University of New Mexico Comprehensive Cancer Center. 

Collectively, the faculty are involved in research on sociocultural, behavioral, biological and environmental determinants of cancer risk, morbidity and mortality in the state and beyond. Information from these studies, has contributed to the development, implementation, and dissemination of interventions to reduce the burden of cancer. 

EBPM faculty often collaborate with local, national, and international collaborations. Through transdisciplinary collaborations with basic, translational, clinical and population scientists, they focus their research on:   

• Cancer risk prediction and risk reduction  
• Cancer screening  
• Cancer outcomes and survivorship  

A cross-cutting theme of their research is a focus on health equity for populations in New Mexico and beyond. Learn more about the faculty and their research.  

The New Mexico Tumor Registry (NMTR) is a population-based cancer registry that was established in 1966.  NMTR provides high quality cancer surveillance data to support scientific research, education policy development and a broad spectrum of activities across the cancer control continuum. 

The NMTR is a founding member of the National Cancer Institute’s Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) Program. NMTR’s area of coverage includes the entire state of New Mexico. The NMTR also collaborates with the Arizona Cancer Registry and the Indian Health Service to provide population-based cancer surveillance for Native American populations in Arizona. 

Cancer surveillance in New Mexico is conducted in accordance with standards set by the SEER Program, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries and the American College of Surgeons.

The Center for Occupational and Environmental Health Promotion (COEHP) provides services in three  vital areas to the UNM community and partners: 

• Clinical Services: The Employee Occupational Health Services (EOHS) clinic provides occupational and environmental health clinical services to UNM. 
• Consultative Services: Develop policies and procedures involving occupational and environmental health for various departments. 
• AED training: UNM HEaRT (Heart Emergency and Rescue Training) offers American Safety and Health Institute (ASHI) two-year certifications for faculty, staff, family, students and community. 

COEHP also teaches residents in occupational and environmental medicine and provides clinical service to research programs, primarily in the mining populations. 

Project ECHO (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes) is a collaborative model of medical education and care management, providing the right information at the right place at the right time.   

Project ECHO is committed to addressing the needs of the most vulnerable populations by equipping communities with the right knowledge, at the right place, at the right time. Through their overarching mission to “move knowledge and not people,” project ECHO has grown to be a global movement with learners from all over the world.

The UNM Clinical and Translational Science Center (CTSC) is a research center that provides infrastructure and services to facilitate clinical and translational research for UNM investigators and collaborators. CTSC is a member of the National Institute of Health Clinical and Translational Science Awards Consortium. This prestigious designation ensures New Mexico remains a leader in the biomedical research field. It also fuels our culture of scientific discovery and its impacts on health. 

The CTSC is committed to bettering health by streamlining science, transforming training environments and improving the conduct, quality and dissemination of research from laboratories to clinical practice and into communities. The CTSC offers a multitude of assets and resources. We maintain a wide range of services openly available to investigators and research teams, such as a sophisticated clinical research unit, investigator training programs, biomedical informatics tools, genomic technologies, a large scale drug discovery program, a clinical research data warehouse and commercialization facilitation. This infrastructure enables scientific discovery to move more rapidly toward enhancing human health.

The Center for Native American Environmental Health Equity Research is a National Institutes of Health/Environmental Protection Agency Center of Excellence on Environmental Health Disparities Research. It addresses pervasive environmental health disparities primarily through biomedical and environmental research and Native American-focused community engagement methods.  

The distribution of contaminants, cultural practices and genetic origins of the center's three core tribal partner communities – Navajo, Crow and Cheyenne River Sioux – provide a basis for sorting out the health effects of metal mixtures from unmediated mine sites.  

The center examines toxicities of metal mixtures, strives to build research capacity and improves the understanding and interpretation of data across tribal communities. The center seeks to develop a framework that characterizes the unique exposure pathways and defines health reflective of tribal perceptions and useful in informing regulatory decision-making.