EuroHealthNet

UBDPolicy researchers joined 24 participants at the University of Cambridge for an intensive course on quantitative Health Impact Assessment (19–23 May 2025), combining lectures, group work and idea sharing to strengthen future cooperation in health research. The course on quantitative Health Impact Assessment took place from May 19^th to May 23^th 2025, organised and hosted by the Public Health Modelling Team at the MRC Epidemiology Unit, University of Cambridge (UK). A total of 24 participants, from eight different institutions, including 12 UBDpolicy researchers, convened in the West Hub campus for five intense days of learning new tools, discussing ideas, sharing insights and strengthening ties for present and future cooperation in health impact assessment research.

Overall, the training addressed a broad range of questions, including – but not limited to: why do we need mathematical models, and what are their limitations? How do our transportation systems affect our health? How can we measure the environmental factors that impact people’s health, and what are the strengths and weaknesses of each method? How can these environmental factors realistically be different from what they are now – also known as scenario development? How will people’s health change for different scenarios? How will a scenario unfold into the future, interacting with many other changes happening at the same time? What follows is a selection of two core themes of the course, distilled to their key messages.

AP and PA: very different, but both highly impactful

Transportation systems impact people’s health through many mechanisms, but two stand out as the most important: exposure to air pollution (AP) and the opportunity for transport-related Physical Activity (PA). We can draw an interesting contrast between these two factors:

• Air pollution increases the risk of many diseases and early death, while physical activity decreases these risks and increases the duration and quality of life.
• Air pollution affects many people at once (although not everyone equally), while physical activity only benefits the individual people who do it.

A change from doing no physical activity to doing a little will greatly improve a person’s health; further increases in the level of physical activity will bring further health improvements, but progressively smaller ones. Walking and cycling are considered active modes of transport because they provide the benefits of physical activity to the people who do them; these benefits outweigh the risks posed by air pollution under most circumstances. Public transport is not an active mode in itself, but most journeys by public transport start and finish with a walking stage, whose health benefits should not be dismissed.

Adding all up with ITHIM

The Public Health Modelling Team developed the Integrated Transport and Health Impact Model (ITHIM), a tool that applies the known links between transport systems and health to produce estimates of health impacts.

ITHIM takes in data describing the travel behaviour in a city of choice: how many trips the people are taking during an average week, how long are these trips, and which transport mode is used (among driving, walking, cycling, and riding public transport). Furthermore, it takes into account how polluted the air already is, how much physical activity the population is already doing, the distribution of the population among various age and sex categories (a.k.a. the demographic make-up), the mortality rate and the frequency of certain diseases of interest happening in the population (a.k.a. the local epidemiology). Finally, one or more transport scenarios are added to the mix. A transport scenario, in this case, is a hypothetical change in the travel behaviour: for example, what would happen if all driving trips under 5km were replaced by walking or cycling trips of the same distance?

ITHIM combines all the data and the scenarios provided to estimate the health impact that would result from each scenario becoming reality. The health impact is estimated in terms of premature deaths or other summary health metrics: for example, a result can look like 100 premature deaths or 40 cases of heart attack prevented every year.

In the second edition of the METEOR newsletter, each project gives updates on its research, policy and communication activities. From scientific publications, to policy briefs, to stakeholder workshops – the projects have been busy addressing different environmental stressors and their health impacts.

Read the newsletter here.

The European Commission’s Community Research and Development Information Service (CORDIS) published an article highlighting findings from the EU-funded UBDPolicy project. The study, published in The Lancet Planetary Health, identified four urban typologies across Europe – compact high-density cities, open low-rise medium-density cities, open low-rise low-density cities and green low-density cities – and assessed their environmental and health impacts. The team found that high-density compact cities have lower carbon emissions per capita, but suffer from poor air quality, higher mortality rates and limited green space, posing significant challenges for sustainable urban living.

Read the full article here.

A new study on the health impact of greenness and mortality from the MISTRAL project has been published in Nature Communications, revealing how access to green spaces can prevent deaths in Italy.

The results underscore the critical need for strong action to increase the amount and accessibility of green spaces in all human settlements. More green means fewer deaths, making it imperative for policymakers to prioritize greening initiatives as a strategic component of public health and urban planning.

In this health impact assessment, the authors utilised satellite data to estimate the number of preventable deaths across Italy’s 49 million adult population by increasing residential greenness. The exposure was measured using the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) at a 10-meter resolution within a 300-meter radius from homes in 7,904 municipalities.

The study’s findings are remarkable. By achieving the level of residential greenness currently experienced by the top 25% of the population nationwide, the researchers estimate that a total of 28,433 (95% confidence interval: 21,400–42,350) deaths and 279,324 (210,247–415,980) years of life lost could have been prevented in Italy in 2022. This represents 5% of the total mortality burden in the considered municipalities.

This research highlights the significant benefits of green spaces on human health, a topic that has long been challenging for epidemiologists to quantify.

Read the study here.

As UBDPolicy moves into the second half of the project, it will begin to transform its research into analysis and reporting. With data collection expected to conclude early next year, results will start flowing in 2025. These findings will be crucial for stakeholder discussions and actionable insights.

Read more in the latest edition of the UBDPolicy newsletter.

Over the past year, the VALESOR project has reached several key milestones, with the first scientific results from the project published. In this edition of their newsletter, you can read about the project’s first year of research into the economic valuation of environmental stressors, and what the project has planned for 2025.

Don’t miss out on subscribing to future newsletters, you can do so via this link: Follow the project | Valesor