Events

18 September 2026, 13:00-17:00 CEST

This online workshop organised by the EU-funded UBDpolicy project aims to discuss how to select exposure–response functions (ERFs) at global, regional, and local scales in health impact assessment (HIA), integrating methodological evidence with policy needs.

ERFs are a core component of HIAs, yet their application across different spatial scales remains inconsistent and insufficiently discussed. This workshop will bring together experts to discuss methodological approaches, empirical evidence, and policy considerations for selecting ERFs for environmental exposures such as air pollution and temperature. The goal is to move toward practical guidance for choosing appropriate ERFs in different decision-making contexts.

Organisers: Xuan Chen, Gerard Hoek, Ulrike Gehring (Utrecht University) on behalf of the UBDpolicy project team

Key questions

• How should ERFs be selected for different policy contexts, such as city-level interventions, national regulations, or global burden assessments?  What approaches can be used when local or regional evidence is limited?
• Under which conditions are global ERFs sufficient, and when are regional or local estimates more appropriate? How should differences in population characteristics, exposure composition, and local conditions be accounted for in ERF selection?

Register here

Programme

Section 1: Background and Framing the Core Question

• 13:00-13:10 Opening and Introduction (5-10 mins) Speaker: Ulrike Gehring
• 13:10–13:35  Introduction to Global vs Regional ERFs (15 mins presentation followed by 10 mins discussion) Speaker: Francesco Forastiere

Section 2: ERFs for Short-Term Exposure

• 13:35–14:00 Temperature and Methodological Advances (15 mins presentation followed by 10 mins discussion) Speaker: Pierre Masselot

Section 3: ERFs for Long-Term Exposure

• 14:00–14:25 Long-Term Air Pollution Exposure – Current Evidence (15 mins presentation followed by 10 mins discussion) Speaker: Evi Samoli

Section 4: Source-Specific Exposure, Local Perspectives, Heterogeneity and Policy Application

• 14:25–14:50 Traffic-Related Air Pollution (15 mins presentation followed by 10 mins discussion) Speaker: Hanna Boogaard

14:50-15:00 Coffee Break

• 15:00–15:25 Heterogeneity in Exposure–Response Functions (15 mins presentation followed by 10 mins discussion) Speaker: Duncan Lee
• 15:25–15:50 Policy Perspective – European HIA (15 mins presentation followed by 10 mins discussion) Speaker: Barbara Hoffmann

15:50–16:20 General Discussion All speakers and participants

16:20–16:30  Closing remarks Speaker: Gerard Hoek

25 November 2026, Residence Palace, Brussels and livestreamed

The persistent and growing health burden from pollution and climate change is not only of concern for individuals and communities, but also for society at large.

As the top environmental threat to the health of people across Europe, air pollution leads to premature deaths and contributes to the aggravation of chronic ill-health including asthma or other respiratory diseases. But the impacts from pollution are not felt equally, with those living close to busy roads in cities, or citizens in Eastern European member states facing a higher risk. The EU Midterm review of the Zero Pollution Plan’s progress underlines that a clean environment is also key for a competitive and sustainable economy, for instance productivity losses from pollution exposure.

Join us on 25 November to explore how we can reduce the health and societal costs of environmental stressors.

This high-level conference will bring together EU, national and local policy-makers, scientists, health experts and civil society organisations to present the latest evidence on the health costs of pollution and discuss the way forward for an EU 2030 agenda which invests in people’s health, reduces disease cost, and lessens inequalities. As part of our exciting agenda, speakers will include:

• Leena Ylä-Mononen, Executive Director, European Environment Agency
• Veronica Manfredi, Director, DG Environment
• Frank Siebern-Thomas, Heat of Unit Green Transition, DG EMPL
• Karen Vancluysen, Secretary General, POLIS
• Suzanne Costello, CEO All Island Institute of Public Health, Ireland

The conference is recognised as an Associated Presidency Event as part of the Irish Presidency of the Council of the European Union 2026.

The conference is organised by the BEST-COST and UBDPolicy research projects, together with their partners in the METEOR cluster. This EU Horizon research cluster has made significant advances in assessing the health cost of the environmental disease burden. The conference will spotlight key outcomes as well as policy recommendations from the projects to protect our health and the planet.

A full agenda will be shared soon.

Register here and join us on 25 November to share your perspective on green, zero-pollution and healthy living environments!

VALESOR aims to make major contributions to the scientific and policy efforts to accommodate economic values of environmental stressors more homogenously in policy making, planning, focusing on chemical stressors such as chemicals and air pollutants transmitted via air, water, and soil vectors.

VALESOR will launch its new innovative online tool for stakeholders to assess health and economic consequences of planned variations in chemical stressors. This tool is based on the existing Alpha-RiskPoll model, used as a policy decision support tool within air pollution reduction work conducted by the EU and by the Air Convention. The tool operates with emission reduction scenarios and for each scenario provides users with a set of outputs such as the effects on health (decreased mortality, morbidity) and the expected benefits. The tool allows end users to easily test several valuation methods, adjust values of key parameters and directly see changes in the results.

Join VALESOR on 23 October for a workshop to explore the tool and its uses.

To join on the 23rd, click here.

For more information, click here.

Agenda

08.45 – 09.00 – Welcome & Introduction to Workshop main objectives and scope (Dr. Gildas Appéré, University of Angers, Dr. Stefan Åström, Anthesis)
09.00 – 09.45 – Presentation of Alpha-RiskPoll model and VALESOR tool (Dr. Michael Holland, EMRC, Katarina Yaramenka, IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute)
09.45 – 10.15 – Presentation of the VALESOR case studies (Dr. Joseph Spadaro, SERC)
10.15 – 10.30 – Break
10.30 – 11.15 – Presentation of PARC project expected results / tool (Dr. Christophe Rouselle, PARC project)
11.15 – 11.45 – VALESOR use cases demonstration (Katarina Yaramenka, IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute)
11.45 – 12.15 – Testing the VALESOR tool, Other EU-funded projects and speakers
12.15 – 13.00 – Open discussion

October 22, 2025 | Université d’Angers, France & online via Microsoft Teams

On 22 October 2025, leading researchers, policy experts, and practitioners will gather at the Université d’Angers – and online – for the METEOR Workshop on Economic Valuation. The event will address how methods for valuing health-related costs of environmental stressors can strengthen European and local decision-making.

The workshop, hosted at Amphi Lagon, Faculté DEG, and accessible remotely via Microsoft Teams, brings together participants to exchange insights on how scientific evidence can be translated into policy and economic assessments that better capture the true costs of environmental stressors.

Agenda highlights

From science to policy: Linking economic valuation to EU and local deliberations, with contributions from the European Commission, ISGlobal, HEAL, and ADEME.

Valuation methods: Presentations on health endpoints from the SWACHE project, complexity in valuing multiple outcomes, and approaches to measuring morbidity with QALYs and DALYs.

Meta-analyses and case studies: A global synthesis of the value of statistical life (VSL), valuation of quality-of-life improvements, and new evidence from the post-industrial region of Taranto.

This one-day hybrid event will serve as a platform to advance methodological discussions and foster collaboration across disciplines, helping to ensure that economic valuation can more effectively support public health and environmental policies.

Please connect to the event via this link and find all the details and agenda here.

As part of the UBDPolicy project, the University of Cambridge team is organising a Health Impact Assessment (HIA) methods course for invited participants in Cambridge from 19-23 May. The course will take place at the University’s West Cambridge Hub in West Cambridge, and will include:

Day 1: Burden of disease, Comparative Risk Assessment (CRA), and Epidemiology

Days 2–5: Integrated Transport and Health Impact Model (ITHIM)

• Day 2: Scenario development
• Day 3: Metrics and Disbayes (r package for estimation of incidence and case fatality for chronic disease, given partial information, using a multi-state model)
• Day 4: Life Tables and Multi-State Life Tables (MSLT)
• Day 5: Addressing uncertainty

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.

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

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

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

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.