Skip to main content
All Posts By

EuroHealthNet

MISTRAL: new publication on Health Impact Assessment on greenness and mortality

By News

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.

Girl biking on a lane

14 February – UBDPolicy Workshop: Equity in Health Impact Assessment

By Events

Health impact assessment (HIA) of the environment involves comparing the health impact of different scenarios using a systematic approach. Impacts can be calculated at the full population level, but often the distribution of impacts across the population is important as well. Specifically, the distribution of health impacts across different socioeconomic or ethnic groups is of interest. Differences in health impacts across socio-economic, ethnic, or gender groups can be caused by all elements in the HIA process, including the level of exposure to environmental stressors, the impact of an intervention to reduce environmental exposure, exposure-response functions (ERFs), or background rates of disease or mortality. Little is known about which factors contribute more to differential impacts across socio-economic groups. For virtually all diseases, background rates of disease and mortality are higher in deprived populations. For the other paths, evidence is less consistent.

The UBDPOLICY project addresses health impacts related to outdoor air pollution, noise, green, and heat in urban areas. Organised by Utrecht University (UU), this workshop will discuss the evidence for quantifying different pathways of inequitable impacts across populations, including methodological issues. It will also assess approaches for integrating equity into health impact assessment of environmental stressors.

The aim of the workshop is to discuss:

  • Evidence for the quantification of different pathways for unequal impacts across population groups, including methodological issues.
  • Approaches for including equity in health impact assessment of environmental stressors.

To attend the event, please register here.

VALESOR Newsletter: Two years of progress

By News

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

19 February – BEST-COST Webinar: Establishing new exposure-response functions for air pollutants and environmental noise

By Events

Air pollution and environmental noise have a huge impact on our respiratory and cardiovascular health. This webinar hosted by the European Burden of Disease Network will present the latest advancements in exposure-response functions (ERFs), focusing on NO₂ and COPD, O₃ and asthma, PM2.5 and lung cancer, and traffic noise and cardiovascular disease. Speakers from the BEST-COST consortium will present their insights from systematic reviews, meta-analyses, and interactive discussions, offering valuable updates on environmental health research.

Join us to explore these critical findings and their implications for public health in this webinar on Wednesday 19 February 2025, 10h-11h30 CET.

Register now.

Programme

10h00 Welcome and Introduction
— Vanessa Gorasso, Sciensano, Belgium
10h05 Introduction BEST-COST and ERFs
— Juanita Haagsma, Erasmus MC, The Netherlands
10h10 NO₂ and COPD
— Tessa Haverkate, Erasmus MC, The Netherlands
10h20 O₃ and asthma
— Hamid Y. Hassen, Antwerp University, Belgium
10h30 General discussion and Q&A
10h45 PM2.5 and lung cancer
— Mariana Corda, Egas Moniz School of Health and Science, Portugal
10h55 Traffic noise and cardiovascular disease
— Periklis Charalampous, UCLouvain, Belgium, and Erasmus MC, The Netherlands
11h05 General discussion and Q&A
11h20 Closing remarks
— Juanita Haagsma, Erasmus MC, The Netherlands

3 December – UBDPolicy Workshop: Critical perspectives on Cost Benefits Analysis and ways forward

By Events

Cost benefits analysis (CBA) is regularly used to evaluate transport investment decisions. Current practices tend to be biased in several ways: They focus on motorised vehicles and savings of travel time which can create a self-fulfilling prophecy: time gains, often based on optimistic assumptions, will justify investments. Community goals related to accessibility, health and liveability are often overlooked or undervalued. Given the lack of comparison of investment decisions – high-speed railway systems, active mobility in cities, these biases can result in suboptimal investments that fail to reflect community demands.

The workshop seeks to critically review the value of travel time and its uses in the updated European Handbook on the external cost of transport, the use of discounting with relevance for key parameters such as climate change or air pollution. Specifically, the workshop will discuss whether cost-benefit analyses should only be used in transport planning processes that already have a focus on increasing accessibility, health and liveability, i.e., to assess the effectiveness of investments with these overarching objectives.

The event is public. It is an online event. Please connect through this link.

Please find all the details and agenda here.

DATE: 3rd December 2024 9:30-17:00 (CET).
VENUE: Online

 

First METEOR newsletter out now

By News

The first edition of the METEOR cluster newsletter is out now. In this edition, you can read about the new METEOR policy brief on the EU’s Ambient Air Quality Directive, upcoming research from each project, as well as recent events and upcoming opportunities.

Read the newsletter here.

9 April – UBDPolicy Workshop: Cost-benefit Analyses in Transport: Applications and Developments

By Events

Cost-benefit analyses (CBA) are used to assess economic efficiency, comparing costs and benefits in monetary terms. CBA are employed to assess environmental, social, regulatory, health, and transport-related costs. Within UBD, different frameworks have relevance. Social CBA focuses on social impacts and welfare changes, including equity and distributional aspects that can be based on both quantitative and qualitative analyses (such as multi-criteria decision analysis) to assess outcomes. Regulatory CBA is primarily used by government agencies to evaluate the costs and benefits of policies on consumers, businesses, and other stakeholders. Health-focused CBA assesses the health outcomes of interventions, often using measures like Quality-Adjusted Life Years (QALYs) or Disability-Adjusted Life Years (DALYs).

Transport CBA evaluates changes in transport infrastructure, considering parameters such as time savings, climate change, or air pollution. The workshop initiates discussions at the intersection of the various CBA methodologies. Transport CBA approaches currently seem to cover the greatest number of parameters, even though there are persistent uncertainties regarding unit costs (traffic fatalities and injuries; travel time value) as well as indirect outcomes of transport system change that remain insufficiently understood and incorporated. More far-reaching is the question of whether CBA is still a timely approach to evaluation, as there is limited evidence that it is used in comprehensive ways and that political decisions rarely consider “inconvenient” outcomes.

The workshop seeks to discuss the complexities, and to make recommendations for comprehensive, transdisciplinary CBA – or alternatives – that can guide policymakers. It also seeks to make suggestions for the standardization of approaches to increase comparability and streamline result integration into planning and decision-making at the city level.

The event is public. It is an online event. Please connect through this link.

Please find all the details and agenda here.

DATE: 9th of April 2024 from 2:00 PM to 5:00 PM (CET).
VENUE: Online

Girl biking on a lane

18-19 March – UBDPolicy Workshop: Health Impact Assessment Indicators and Well-being

By Events

In this workshop, UBDPolicy aims to facilitate discussions among experts and stakeholders on the indicators used in Health Impact Assessments (HIA). They will explore how these indicators are perceived by stakeholders, identify gaps, and discuss methods of integrating well-being into HIA. Additionally, they plan to develop a pilot survey to gather insights on how different indicators are rated by experts and stakeholders, and will collect valuable feedback on the survey.

The event is public. It is a hybrid event, you can attend online or in person in Utrecht. If you would like to participate please contact us through the UBDPolicy contact page.

Please find all details and agenda here.

DATE: 18-19 March 2024 from 9:00 AM to 16:30 PM (CET).
VENUE: Utrecht, the Netherlands.

13 February – UBDPolicy Workshop: Science to Policy Consultation. Reducing the Urban Burden of Disease in Zagreb through Environmental Policies

By Events

The EU-funded research project Urban Burden of Disease Estimation for Policy-making (UBDPolicy), which aims to estimate the health and socio-economic costs and benefits of air quality, noise, lack of urban green spaces, heat and temperature, physical activity and inequality for almost 1000 European cities in the EU.

The city of Zagreb has been selected as one of 10 cities for which a detailed assessment of health costs and benefits will be carried out, and UBDPolicy is now seeking the expertise of decision-makers, administrators and stakeholders on the scenarios and findings of the research.

Benefits of participation for decision-makers and stakeholders:

  • Exclusive access to existing and new data showing the health benefits of different urban environmental and transport policies, which can be used to communicate with the public.
  • Health cost-benefit analyses that can be used to inform policy design and implementation
  • The ability to provide guidance to researchers on which data are most needed for current and future policy making.

During the workshop, we will explore possible health and well-being scenarios that are relevant for the preparation or evaluation of current and future policies and strategies in Zagreb (e.g. climate neutrality by 2030, low emission zone and others). For example, health impact assessment of xx% increase in number of cyclists/cycling infrastructure or any other measure.

DATE: 13 February 2024 from 9:00 AM to 12:30 PM (CET).
VENUE: Radićeva Street 9, Zagreb.

The event is open to the public, only in person in Zagreb. If you would like to attend, please complete the registration form.

The workshop will be held in Croatian and English. Simultaneous interpretation from Croatian to English and vice versa will be provided.