Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2-2025
Abstract
Environmental exposures, including widespread industrial pollution, impact human health and are amplified in more highly exposed communities. Policy and regulatory frameworks for making decisions and recommendations on interventions to mitigate or prevent exposures tend to narrowly focus on exposure and some health-related data related to risks. Typically, such frameworks do not consider other factors, including essentiality, health equity, and distribution of benefits and costs. Further, decisions and recommendations lack transparency regarding how they were developed. We developed the Navigation Guide Evidence-to-Decision Framework for Environmental Health (E2DFEH) to provide a structured and transparent framework incorporating a range of scientific information and factors for decision-making. We reviewed current evidence-to-decision frameworks and engaged in an iterative consensus-based process involving 30 experts from 25 organizations in the academic, government, and nonprofit sectors. The E2DFEH framework includes three Foundations that are structural factors considered as part of recommendation development: 1) Essentiality, 2) Human Rights, and 3) Quality of the Evidence. It also includes three core Criteria that guide the development of a specific recommendation, informed by an evaluation of relevant evidence: 1) Environmental Justice, 2) Maximizing Benefits and Reducing Harm, and 3) Sociocultural Acceptability and Feasibility. The framework’s goal is to make the decision process transparent and comprehensive through explicit consideration of core factors important for decisions, leading to more equitable and health-protective interventions.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.4c08063
Recommended Citation
Chartres, Nicholas, Max T. Aung, Susan L. Norris, Courtney Cooper, Lisa A. Bero, Roger Chou, Devon C. Payne-Sturges, Wendy E. Wagner, Jessica W. Reyes, Lisa M. Askie, Daniel A. Axelrad, Deysi Flores Vigo, Jill E. Johnston, Juleen Lam, Keeve E. Nachman, Eva Rehfuess, Rachel Rothschild, et al. "Development of the Navigation Guide Evidence-to-Decision Framework for Environmental Health: Version 1.0." Environmental Science & Technology 59, no. 9 (2025): 4230-4244.
Comments
Copyright © 2025 The Authors. Published by American Chemical Society. This publication is licensed under CC-BY 4.0.
Chartres, Nicholas, Max T. Aung, Susan L. Norris, Courtney Cooper, Lisa A. Bero, Roger Chou, Devon C. Payne-Sturges, Wendy E. Wagner, Jessica W. Reyes, Lisa M. Askie, Daniel A. Axelrad, Deysi Flores Vigo, Jill E. Johnston, Juleen Lam, Keeve E. Nachman, Eva Rehfuess, Rachel Rothschild, Patrice Sutton, Lauren Zeise, and Tracey J. Woodruff. "Development of the Navigation Guide Evidence-to-Decision Framework for Environmental Health: Version 1.0." Environmental Science & Technology 59, no. 9 (2025): 4230-4244. DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.4c08063