RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK – Together, UNC Chapel Hill, NC State University, Duke University and RTI International do $3.5 billion worth of research every year.

“The opportunity that’s available to the four entities is to come together, to work collaboratively, and to try to attack really big problems in the world,” Wayne Holden, RTI International’s President and CEO, says in the accompanying video.

Holden outlines some of those efforts, both in North Carolina and around the globe: Detection of lead in drinking water in North Carolina child-care centers and delivery of nearly 2 billion doses of medication for neglected tropical diseases.

Jennifer Hoponick Redmon, a senior environmental health scientist at RTI, discusses how the state had no data or regulations on lead in drinking water at child-care centers and schools. 

Because the central nervous systems of young children are still developing, any level of exposure can result in diminished IQ or behavioral problems that are irreversible. People often focus on replacing lead pipes in the United States – but that will cost trillions, Redmon says.

“Meanwhile, children are going to be adults. So the goal in our study was, right now, let’s prevent exposure to lead – that was our focus,” she says.

Phillip Graham, who leads RTI’s Center on Social Determinants, Risk Behaviors and Prevention Science, is in the midst of RTI’s efforts to combat the nation’s opioid epidemic.

“I really take RTI’s mission about improving the human condition to heart,” Graham says.

But beyond pain management, he says, we often overlook factors such as unemployment, poverty, social isolation, anxiety and depression that lead to substance abuse and addiction.

“It’s important that those not be forgotten as we think about how to comprehensively approach this epidemic,” he says.

“What I was concerned about was, how do we do good research in communities to really improve the lives of folks?”