Dear Colleagues,

The “Adolescent Health” section will focus on individual and contextual factors that shape adolescent health outcomes. Teens’ social contexts including family, peers, schools, and neighborhoods, as well as exposure to social media, can affect teens’ health in positive and negative ways. In addition, systemic experiences related to teens’ race and ethnicity, gender, social class, and sexual orientation or identity influence their health outcomes, such as experiences of stereotyping or discrimination. We invite papers focused on adolescent health and the factors that shape it, particularly those addressing reproductive health, such as teen pregnancy and parenting. Quantitative, qualitative and mixed-methods papers are welcome.

Kind regards,
Dr. Jennifer M. Grossman

Key words

• Adolescent health
• Social contexts
• Family relationships
• Reproductive health
• Teen pregnancy
• Teen parenting
• Social media

Dear Colleagues,

This session on Children’s Environmental Health will focus on the latest research into the ways in which the impact of the urban environment on children’s health and well-being are distinct from the impact on adults. This may be because of the different activities in which children participate, the distinct microenvironments in which they spend their time, or the personal behavior choices that they or their parents make on their behalf. It may also be due to their different susceptibility to environmental stressors at their particular stage of physical development. This session is expected to be multidisciplinary, bringing together both qualitative and quantitative experts in areas including but not limited to environmental science, population health, transport engineering and urban design. It is expected that the knowledge gained will have policy implications and will help towards ensuring that the needs of children are captured in such policy.

Best regards,
Assoc. Prof. Kim N. Dirks

Keywords

• Children
• Urban living
• Transport/travel
• Active transport
• Air pollution exposure
• Water quality
• Housing
• Schools
• Playgrounds
• Environmental exposure
• Toxins
• Outdoor environment
• Indoor environment
• Behaviour
• Recreation

Dear Colleagues,

Evidence of the harm to health and well-being from widespread environmental degradation and global climate change is growing. The poorest people on the planet tend to suffer most from the health effects of exposure to environmental hazards like air pollution and impure water. In turn, disease and disability related to polluted environments slows and blocks economic development. In this section, we would like to draw attention to global research on environmental exposure, transcending national boundaries, with the goal of improving health for all people by reducing the environmental exposure that leads to avoidable disease, disability and death.

Dear Colleagues,

Environmental health is one of the world's biggest public health concerns. The marked increase in the use of public health registries holds enormous potential to address a wide range of health care issues that have arisen in recent years across the globe. Registries can yield valuable information that helps people learn more about a certain condition, hazard, or adverse event, particularly when health consequences are uncertain over time or will probably take years to develop. As a powerful tool and a cost-efficient data-collection instrument, a well-designed registry helps one assess potential health outcomes and contributes to the generation of research hypotheses.

Both exposure-based registries and disease-based registries have become increasingly popular for data collection and follow-up in the field of environmental health research with notable scientific inferences. An increasing number of epidemiologic studies have started to use registries to measure associations between exposures and health outcomes, which have led to substantially improved generalisability of research findings to a broader population.

In this section, we welcome worldwide submissions on a variety of topics of interest including (but not limited to) experiences and lessons of creating health registries, novel epidemiological findings on exposure–health outcome issues, advances in statistical techniques for data analysis, risk assessments and decision support, and other types of registry-based research efforts that provide new information to add to the existing scientific knowledge.

Best regards
Prof. Harry H.X. Wang

Keywords

• Health Registry
• Epidemiology
• Health Outcomes

Dear Colleagues,

The health effects of air pollution are well established and thoroughly studied. Nevertheless, there still remain some issues that require closer examination in epidemiological studies, as outlined below. In any given setting, acute short-term exposures are correlated with long-term chronic exposures typical for a location. Therefore, it is still a challenge to disentangle the acute and eventually reversible health effects from the chronic and often irreversible effects of air pollution. Epidemiological studies usually rely on exposure data based on a small list of indicator pollutants. With technological changes, the composition of a pollution mixture will likely be refined and change, and it is therefore necessary to constantly re-evaluate the relevance of each indicator pollutant to the health effects of different pollution mixtures. Epidemiological studies examining the biological interaction between air pollution and other environmental or social stressors are scarce. As multiple exposures are typical in the real world, we must know how the combination of multiple stressors does indeed affect health. I am looking forward to your input and hope that it will boost the research on air pollution and health.

Kind regards,
Dr. Hanns Moshammer

Keywords

• Air pollution,
• Acute versus chronic effects,
• Indicator pollutants,
• Source-specific health effects,
• Combination of exposures,
• Interaction effects

Dear Colleagues,

It is my great honor and pleasure to welcome you to the E-Conference on Climate Change and Health. It aims to promote research collaborations and to interpret scientific research findings for the health practice and services community.

Climate change has had, and will continue to have a significant impact on population health. Negative impacts are particularly severe among vulnerable populations, such as the elderly, patients with existing chronic diseases, outdoor workers, residents in rural and remote areas, and people with lower socioeconomic status, among others. It is important for scientists from different disciplines to work collaboratively to assess health risk, explore risk factors and develop effective adaptation strategies, and, more importantly, to translate the research outcomes into public health and clinical practice. This conference will therefore provide a unique opportunity for scientists from diverse areas such as climatology, meteorology, public health policy, environmental health, epidemiology, occupational health and safety, infectious disease control and prevention, anthropology, health sociology, and clinical medicine, to share their knowledge, exchange their updated research findings, etc. Furthermore, the conference will also provide a platform for scientists and policy-makers to discuss the potential collaborations.

The E-Conference will cover key areas of climate change and health, including:

• Environmental Health
• Occupational Health and Safety
• Time-series data Analysis Approaches
• Climate change, Infectious disease control and prevention,
• Climate change adaptation
• Community resilience
• Climate change and health service policy

We are looking forward to receiving your contributions to this unique event!

Best Regards,
Professor Peng Bi, MBBS PhD

Dear Colleagues,

The “Environmental Exposures and Health” session will focus on the two components of how exposure to the environment influences human health and wellbeing, examining both the negative and positive effects of environmental exposure. Exposures may either be acute or chronic, and health outcomes distal or proximal. The session will bring together experts in the area and allow comparison of common methodological approaches for examining exposures to environmental factors and how these influence the prevalence, incidence, and geographic distribution of health outcomes. Additionally, methods and techniques for sharing findings via policy, citizen science, and media will be examined.

Kind regards,
Dr. Nicholas Osborne

Keywords

• Environmental exposures
• chronic exposure, greenspace
• low level exposure
• bluespace
• metals
• pesticide
• radiation
• food
• acute exposure
• noise
• light
• phthalates
• endocrine disruptors
• air pollution
• built environment
• exposome
• wellbeing
• natural toxins

Dear Colleagues,

This session on Industrial and Occupational Health is intended to collect the latest papers related to the recognition and prevention of physical, chemical, biological, ergonomic and psychosocial hazards in the workplace. We anticipate to gather experts from different researching fields to share their experiences and concerns about the emerging risks in daily working environments. Traditional and new approaches to assessing potential risks will be present as an effort towards promoting the incorporation of these approaches into field practice, and also help academia, governments and industries to gain insight into these potential hazards in order to adopt adequate measures to reduce the risks.

Best regards,
Prof. Ta-Yuan Chang

Keywords:

• Industrial Health
• Occupational Health
• Hazard Identification
• Exposure Assessment
• Risk Assessment
• Prevention

Dear Colleagues,

This session on risk assessment and the management of environmental hazards intends to bring together experts from different research areas to discuss the potential impact of chemical, physical, microbiological or psychosocial hazards on a specified human population or ecological system under a specific set of conditions and for a certain time frame. There is an awareness of risk to the environment, along with a growing concern for the continuing potential damage caused by hazards. Moreover, besides physical protection, a synthesis of anti-hazard measures is being considered, including land use management, and better planning for response and recovery and emergency warnings. The challenge to researchers within the hazards community is to use their skill to adopt a wider perspective, involving global change for a safer and more sustainable environment. Risk assessment and risk management are used to define broadly the activities of identifying and quantifying risk due to environmental agents and processes, and the actions taken to prevent or minimize these risks. Thus, it has been recognized that an integrated approach to environmental hazards needs to be attempted using common methodologies, such as risk analysis, which involves quantitative and qualitative risk assessment and risk management. Risk assessment is intended to provide complete information to risk managers, specifically policymakers, and regulators in order to take the best possible decisions. However, there is a lack of such information, which constitutes a serious deficiency in the reduction of environmental hazards. This session covers a series of important topics that help to emphasize the importance of the analysis and management of risk to planners and researchers around the world. It is concerned with all aspects of risk management and hazard mitigation, which are associated with both natural and anthropogenic hazards.

Kind regards,
Prof. Dr. Mohamed-Bassem A. Ashour

Keywords:

• Risk analysis, assessment, and management.
• Early warning and vulnerability.
• Temporal and spatial aspects of risk.
• Chemical pollutants and contaminants: in air, water, soil, and food.
• Pathogenic microbiological contaminants in food and water.
• Risk assessment associated with genetically modified organisms.
• Risk assessment associated with nanotechnology.
• Waste management.
• Risk assessment and life style.
• Radiation sources.
• Electromagnetic fields.
• Climate and climate change.
• Natural disasters.
• Multi-hazard risk assessment and decision making.
• Data collection and analysis.
• Mathematical models in risk extrapolation.
• Communication of risk.
• Case studies.