UBDPolicy researchers at ISEE Young 2024 Conference in Rennes

UBDPolicy researchers present their work on environmental epidemiology at the ISEE Young 2024 conference

Published On: 05/07/2024Categories: News

The ISEE Young 2024 conference took place in Rennes, France, from June 5-7. It was organised by the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology (ISEE), the European Doctoral College on Environment and Health (EDCEH), the Research Institute for Environmental and Occupational Health (Irset) and the EHESP School of Public Health. With almost 300 participants, the conference brought together doctoral candidates and early career researchers from across Europe, spanning countries from France to Serbia. Presentations at the conference covered a wide range of themes including the exposome, adolescent health, and environmental justice.

Learning from peers and role models

Georgia Dyer and Xuan Chen from the UBDPolicy project attended the conference and presented their work on urban burden of disease estimation for policymaking. For both early-career researchers, this conference was an excellent opportunity to hone their skills in presenting their scientific work in compelling formats and network with peers in the field.

Dyer participated in the speed talks and presented the progress of the UBDPolicy project so far. “I am grateful to ISEE Young for this opportunity to learn from and exchange with an inspiring community of early career scientists,” shared Dyer. For Dyer, the keynote speech by Barbara Hoffman, Chair of the European Respiratory Society’s Advocacy Council “was a major highlight,” where Hoffman discussed the revision of the EU Ambient Air Quality Directive and shared some “powerful insights on translating scientific evidence into policy-making.”

Translating science into policy

Xuan Chen, a second year doctoral researcher at IRAS, Utrecht University presented her work on health impact assessments (HIA) within the UBDPolicy project. Her presentation highlighted the project’s approaches to estimate health impacts of air pollution using Concentration-Response Functions (CRFs) on the associations between long-term exposure to particulate matter with a diameter below 2.5 μm (PM2.5) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) with all-cause mortality in HIA. Instead of using typical single exposure models, these new approaches aim to accurately estimate the health impacts of exposure mixtures and avoid double counting if the effects from correlated pollutants are combined.

Chen was equally enthusiastic about attending a workshop on methods for risk extrapolation from multi-location studies in environmental epidemiology and an interactive game on translating science to policy. “I learned so much about the complexities of translating science into policy and the importance of HIAs in communicating findings from environmental epidemiology to inform urban design policies and public health interventions,” expressed Chen.

 

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