Compared to most other New Yorkers, Northern Manhattan residents suffer disproportionately from the impacts of environmental pollution. To help alleviate this disparity, WE ACT has partnered with the Center for Environmental Health in Northern Manhattan (CEHNM) as a member of the Center's Community Outreach Education Core. The mission of CEHNM is to understand and prevent the environmental components of diseases. The Center members concentrate their efforts on three disease categories: neurodegenerative diseases, including Parkinson’s disease, essential tremor and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS); respiratory diseases, including asthma and emphysema; and environmentally related cancer. Members of the Community Outreach Education Core are tasked with disseminating the Center's findings to community residents. WE ACT takes the work a step further by using Center findings to galvanize residents into advocacy work designed to improve public policy around environmental health.

Ongoing work includes basic laboratory studies of disease mechanisms and epidemiologic studies of exposed populations. WE ACT and CEHNM are seeking to understand the effects of both environmental exposures and genetic susceptibility.

Northern Manhattan has some of the highest childhood asthma hospitalization rates in the nation. Incidences of obesity, low birth weight, and other respiratory illnesses among children are also disproportionately high in this community. WE ACT has a long-standing partnership with the Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health(CCCEH), with whom we work as part of the Community Outreach and Translation Core (COTC) to improve the environmental health of children in low-income, urban communities of color. The COTC communicates the Center’s research results to local residents, community organizations, health care providers, public interest groups, and policymakers so they can take action to protect children from the threats of air pollutants and other endocrine disrupting chemicals.