Darryl B. Hood
American environmental neuroscientist
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Through Civil rights movement, Poverty and Entrepreneurship
Early life
Darryl B. Hood was born in 1958 in North Carolina. The oldest of 3 children, Hood grew up in an ordinary life. Raised by both parents heavily involved in church during the Civil Rights Movement, Darryl became a part of history at a young age. At 10 years old, after the Brown vs. Board of Education case was being heard across the country, Darryl’s parents made him a plaintiff in the later case Swann vs. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, aimed at speeding up the racial integration of public schools. During his freshman year in college Darryl's grandmother was diagnosed with uterine cancer. Partaking in his grandmother's frequent doctoral visits throughout her fight with cancer, Darryl noticed it was difficult for him and his family to understand and effectively communicate with the doctors. This frustration drove Darryl’s initial interest of Biology and later his pursuits of public health research and education. Darryl was heavily influenced by his family. He was taught to work for what he wanted; his foundation as a young boy helped shape him into the man he is today.
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Education
Darryl B. Hood graduated with a bachelor's science degree in biology and chemistry from Johnson C. Smith University and received his Ph.D. from East Tennessee State University in 1990. Soon after, Dr. Hood began research and served as a member of the faculty at Meharry Medical College from 1993 to 2013. Hood completed his postdoctoral studies at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine at the Center in Molecular Toxicology. Dr. Hood has also mentored over 15 MSPH/MPH, 15-PhD, and 9-Postdoctoral fellowships.
Teaching/experiences
Dr. Hood has been a professor and entrepreneur at Meharry Medical College since March 1994. This college, located within an area characterized by extreme poverty, developed Dr. Hood's understanding of the challenges faced by vulnerable communities. Building on this experience, he began to serve as the President of the Minority Professional Consortium for Environmental Impacted Communities, LLC in Tennessee during the early 2000s. This role allowed Dr. Hood to advocate for and support minority populations suffering from environmental health issues.
In 2013 Dr. Hood became a Tenured Associate Professor and Entrepreneur at Ohio State University. Then, in August 2021, he became a Professor and Deans Fellow for the Division of Environmental Health Sciences, College of Public Health. Dr. Darryl B. Hood's commitment to environmental health equity also extended to national platforms, as evidenced by his service on the US EPA Exposure and Human Health Subcommittee of the Science Advisory Board for six years following 2010.
Ohio State University is where Dr. Hood conducts most of his work.
Research
Darryl B. Hood has published 105 peer reviewed studies, ranging from the Exposome-Wide Association Study (ExWAS) applied to Latino cancer disparities to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and their implications for developmental, molecular, and behavioral neurotoxicology. He spent the first half of his research career looking for the molecular level mechanisms that were operative when someone is living in an area that is disproportionately exposed to toxins compared to those that are not. During his fellowship in the Center of Molecular Toxicology at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine from 1993 to 2013 he received over 11.2 million dollars in funding for a series of projects focusing on these toxic substances. Daryl’s current research is focused on public health education by expanding the Public Health Exposome to cover new knowledge found after the COVID-19 pandemic that can better prepare society for the next viral pandemic threat.
Community-driven health
Dr. Hood is the co-architect of his research project titled the Public Health Exposome; this aided in studying how several factors such as race, culture, and the environment affect health outcomes such as chronic diseases in marginalized communities. To determine a metric of overall health in diverse situations, Dr. Hood and his colleagues coined the Health Opportunity Index, a tool used to figure out and understand how the interplay of multiple factors affects differing communities’ health. With the help of this tool, Dr. Hood and colleagues discovered that when communities work alongside experts from various fields, such as academia, Medicare providers, K5 learning centers, and more, the health outcomes of vulnerable populations can be improved drastically. He recently presented this research in January 2024 in Nashville. Dr. Hood and colleagues looked at the health disparities of marginalized communities, specifically within areas of food deserts. They found that, in these areas, higher levels of COVID-19 existed because vaccines at the time were given in grocery store parking lots or pharmacies; the marginalized communities were located far from the stores that were chosen to house these vaccination centers. They also looked at the life expectancies changes from birth in these vulnerable communities.
Neurotoxicology
Darryl B. Hood's work in the research of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, as well as benzo(a)pyrene, (B(a)P) has shown that utero exposure to B(a)P results in a diminished expression of specific NMDA receptor subunits that manifest their effects later in life, being shown as deficits in neuronal activity in the offspring. Hood and his fellow researchers' work and testing led to the conclusion that exposure to B(a)P in utero at the time of synapse formation will express a strong negative effect on brain function and will produce defects in activity and experience-dependent gene expression, leading to lower mental developmental index scores and intelligence quotients. This research resulted in the confirmation that common environmental contaminants have direct negative impacts on neuronal development. Facts like these that have been established by Dr. Hood's research were recognized by the USEPA in 2017’s Integrated Risk Information System Assessment (IRIS) resulting in significant public policy change.
Hood and colleagues evaluate the effect that B(a)P has on the brain discussing the expression of glutamate NMDA receptor subunits and the role that this plays in cortical responses. They recorded the neural activity of mice exposed and ones not exposed, making that their control group. Along with his fellow researchers, Hood discovered that exposure to B(a)P throughout development can impact cortical function through modulation of glutamatergic receptor subunit expression within the somatosensory cortex. This modulation they found occurred over time rather than being immediate. To evaluate this, Hood and colleagues studied how mRNA is expressed in both a control group and a group exposed to B(a)P for NR2B, which is a glutamatergic NMDA receptor subunit. His work gave this new information to the field of Environmental Health Sciences about postal brain development in the environment.
In the article "PAH Particles Perturb Prenatal Processes and Phenotypes: Protection from Deficits in Object Discrimination Afforded by Dampening of Brain Oxidoreductase Following In Utero Exposure to Inhaled Benzo(a)pyrene", Hood used the wild-type (WT) cytochrome P450 oxidoreductase (Cpr) mouse to evaluate glutamatergic signaling and NMDA receptor function. He successfully demonstrated that the harm done by exposure to B(a)P in early cortical development results in lasting phenotypic changes in Cpr mouse models. In the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), there was a statistically significant increase in basal level concentrations of glutamate for the B(a)P-exposed Cpr mice. The results of this data coincide with previous results suggesting an impact on currents coming inward through the NMDA receptor when glutamate levels are elevated.
Environmental
Darryl B. Hood also took part in many environmental and social-based studies, such as The Effects of Social, Personal, and Behavioral Risk Factors and PM 2.5% on Cardio-Metabolic Disparities in a Cohort of Community Health Center Patients. The results of this experiment indicated that race, as a risk factor for disease, and as a way to elaborate on the patterning of CMD, should not be considered as "biological programming". The study indefinitely connected the disparities amongst highly impoverished areas to be an important factor in regard to health outcomes. The publication called for additional studies that examine racial health disparities within different SES, social-economic status, and subgroups, particularly with these groups being in different geographical areas.
In another study, Hood participated in applying Citizen Science Risk Communication Tools in a Vulnerable Urban Community. This study created a portal that included a few categories for the local community called a public participatory geographic information system (PPGIS). This was used to communicate with citizens about potential or current environmental risks due to the industries in their communities, specifically due to elevated levels of metals in the soil outside of the natural level. Participants were to be informed by a card about the results of their residential soils so they could be more vocal and aware of their health. This study explored five social determinants of health: economic stability, education, health/healthcare, neighborhood, social, and community. They did this by creating a campaign which is known as The Healthy People 2020. The goal of this study was to begin the conversation of working towards developing better education and environmental interventions to improve the health of the community.
Dr. Hood has recently been involved in research looking into the allostatic load, the effects that chronic stress has on an individual, and cardiovascular disease risk. focused their study on African American adults measuring their allosteric load (taking different blood measurements), and resilience by looking into their personal lives, and their lifestyle using covariates. The overall findings of this study were that allosteric load and cardiovascular disease were directly proportional. This means that with higher levels of allosteric load African-American adults have a higher chance of developing cardiovascular disease as they age.
Professional achievements
- Autumn 2019 African American and African Studies Community Extension Center Engaged Scholar Fellow: A fellowship given by the CEC that focuses on engaging with the community and conducting research projects to help marginalized communities within the Columbus, Ohio region.
- 2022 Ruth C. Bailey Endowed Fund: This award, given by Ohio State’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion (ODI), seeks to honor a faculty or staff member who has shown a substantial commitment to promoting multicultural interaction and fostering understanding.
- President of the SOT Toxicologists of African Origin Special Interest Group
- US EPA Exposure and Human Health Subcommittee of the Science Advisory Board member
- President of the Minority Professional Consortium for Environmental Impacted Communities: This association addresses the needs of communities affected disproportionately by pollution.
- And more.