EAST PALESTINE — The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced Thursday a “multi-disciplinary, community-focused series of studies” to better understand the implications of the 2023 Norfolk Southern train derailment and chemical release on public health in East Palestine and surrounding communities.

According to a HHS press release, the National Institutes of Health has launched a $10 million research initiative to assess and address the long-term health outcomes stemming from the derailment at the urging of Vice President J.D. Vance and under the leadership of U.S. Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

“NIH is working to ensure that the people of East Palestine and the surrounding communities are listened to, cared for, and get the answers they deserve,” NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya said. “This multidisciplinary research program will focus on public health tracking and surveillance of the community’s health conditions to support health care decisions and preventive measures.”

The HSS said that the studies, which will be funded by $2 million over five years, will focus on:

• Longitudinal epidemiological research to understand the health impacts of exposures on short- and long-term health outcomes including relevant biological markers of risk.

• Public health tracking and surveillance of the community’s health conditions to support health care decisions and preventive measures.

• Extensive, well-coordinated communications among researchers, study participants, community stakeholders, health care providers, government officials, and others to establish a comprehensive approach to address the affected communities’ health concerns.

Kennedy called the studies the “first large-scale, coordinated, multi-year federal study dedicated to the long-term health effects” of the disaster adding that “the people of East Palestine have a right to clear, science-backed answers about the impact on their health.”

Vance, who has been critical of the Biden’s administration response to the disaster since the beginning of it when he was then the U.S. senator from Ohio, again took aim at the former administration’s handling of the disaster.

“As a senator, it was incredibly frustrating watching the Biden administration refuse to examine the potentially dangerous health impacts on the people of East Palestine following the train derailment,” Vance said. “I’m proud that we finally have a new president who takes the concerns of everyday, working-class people seriously. This historic research initiative will finally result in answers that this community deserves, and I’m grateful for the work of Secretary Kennedy and Director Bhattacharya on these efforts.”

U.S. Rep. Michael Rulli, R-Salem, and Ohio’s Republican U.S. Sens. Bernie Moreno and Jon Husted also used Thursday’s announcement to blast Biden’s derailment response. Rulli accused Biden of “trying to sweep under the rug the catastrophic negligence and long-term health consequences of the East Palestine disaster.” Moreno said that Biden “abandoned East Palestine and left a community of working Americans behind when they needed him most” and Husted thanked the Trump Administration for the “reassurance that comes with transparency that East Palestine deserves.”

While it took Biden more than a year to visit East Palestine, he did award six NIH grants to universities in February 2024 to study the environmental and epidemiological impacts of the derailment.

Those studies include medical monitoring, biospecimen collections, surveys, cataloging symptoms, studying the impacts the mix of toxins spilled may have had and continue to have on the communities and tracking liver health in and around East Palestine following the release of vinyl chloride. In total, the 2024 NIH funding for those grants was about $1.3 million.

Thursday’s announcement means another $2 million annually will go toward understanding the health impacts caused by the Feb. 3, 2023, derailment. Like Biden’s grants, the Trump administration initiative will be funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

The HHS said that a series of grants (one to three awards) will be issued to analyze various types of studies and community activities. The deadline to submit research proposals is July 21 with research projects to start this fall with “the primary goal is to create a program that is co-developed by the community, academic researchers and other stakeholders to address the immediate and longer-term health concerns from exposures to chemicals released during the train derailment.”

Gov. Mike DeWine welcomed the news of additional NIH grants.

“This funding will enable the people of East Palestine to have the peace of mind that comes from knowing that any potential for long-term health effects will be studied by the scientists at the National Institutes of Health,” he said.

The NIH has been engaged with the East Palestine community since the derailment. In the summer of 2023, Dr. Aubrey Miller, NIH disaster research response Pprogram director, took part in a community informational session on public health and, in November 2023, the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine hosted a virtual public workshop series to determine the health research and surveillance priorities related to derailment. Last summer, the NIH used the Ohio-Pennsylvania University Research Consortium at East Palestine High School as an outreach for community participation in the studies funded by the first six NIH grants.