The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has announced 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.”

HHS said the studies will be funded by $2 million over five years. 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.”

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.

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.