Improving the evaluation of the impact of environmental exposures and policies on human health: utilising the strengths of natural experiments

Please join the webinar on March 2nd at 11am EST hosted by the Enviro Epi Committee. Dr. Frank de Vocht (University of Bristol, UK) will be presenting 'Improving the evaluation of the impact of environmental exposures and policies on human health: utilising the strengths of natural experiments'.

View Webinar Recording Here

Speaker Bio: Frank de Vocht is Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health at the University of Bristol in the UK. He was originally trained in occupational and environmental epidemiology at the Universities of Wageningen and Utrecht in the Netherlands, and worked at the International Agency for Research on Cancer (WHO-IARC) and Centre for Occupational and Environmental Health at The University of Manchester (UK) before moving to the Centre for Public Health in Bristol. His main areas of interest are (1) how to best evaluate non-randomised public health interventions, and (2) the impact of environmental factors on human health; in particular those related to ionising and non-ionising radiation. He is a member of several national and international expert advisory committees on public and environmental health and radiation safety.

Abstract: “Improving the evaluation of the impact of environmental exposures and policies on human health: utilising the strengths of natural experiments”. In this presentation, Professor de Vocht will present the limitations of using standard epidemiological study designs for informing risk assessment. He will introduce natural experiment evaluations and will discuss their value with respect to causal inference. Having thus ‘set the scene’, he will discuss how to strengthen the use of natural experiment evaluations and improve the strength of causal strengths that can be made from them using various epidemiological design features and contemporary statistical evaluation methods. Environmental and occupational epidemiology have specific idiosyncrasies compared to other public health topics, and an interactive discussion of these might provide new ways forward for future evaluations of environmental and occupational health hazards.

Click here to learn more about the HESI Environmental Epidemiology for Risk Assessment Committee