The future of the environmental epidemiology

The Centre for Research in Environmental Epidemiology (CREAL) is 10 years old and has contributed substantially to the field of environmental epidemiology that has grown substantially in recent decades and it has provided an evidence base crucial for policy making.

On November 27th, in the framework of the 10^th CREAL’s anniversary, it took places a symposium that brought together a number of young scientific leaders in this field to discuss the future of environmental epidemiology over the next 20 years.

“CREAL has a relevant position worldwide. According SCIMAGO index, CREAL occupies the first place in normalized impact factor and the second place in level of excellence among all research centres in Spain in health research. One important decision to become stronger and grow is the alliance with ISGlobal. The goal is to consolidate a world-class research centre in Global Health. The future? There is a global agenda for environmental epidemiology. The objective is to generate the best environmental public health science leading to effective interventions globally”, said Josep M. Antó, director of the CREAL, an ISGlobal allied center, at the beginning of the symposium.

“What will environmental epidemiology look like over the next 20 years? What exposures should be studied; which methods and tools will be available, and what does the roadmap for the future look like? We talked about all these subjects,” said Mark Nieuwenhuijsen, researcher at CREAL and moderator of the symposium, who explained that “we don’t know what will be the future, but there will be a lot of data out there on environmental exposures and health and many and diverse scientists are needed to analyse the data and make sense of them”.