The Roundtable on Environmental Health Sciences, Research, and Medicine was established to provide a mechanism for parties interested in environmental health from the academic, industrial, and federal research perspectives to meet and discuss sensitive and difficult environmental health issues of mutual interest in a neutral setting. The purpose is to foster dialogue, but not to provide recommendations.

Since its inception, the Roundtable has addressed current and emerging issues in environmental health through discussions related to the state of the science, research gaps, and policy implications. The Roundtable has moved towards an increasingly global perspective in its discussions on nanotechnology, the interrelationship between trade and health, and corporate social responsibility in environmental health. The Roundtable is currently focused on issues of domestic and international importance such as climate change, sustainable drinking water, transportation-related energy use, and environmental health decision making.