WHO Collaborating Centre for Environmental Risks and Health

Reporting on the barriers and facilitators faced by healthcare professionals when communicating air pollution risks and strategies to support accurate information delivery to patients

Following the publication of the WHO AQG, WHO ECEH has been working on developing technical documents and tools to support implementation of the new guidelines, evidence-informed policy making and measures in Member States .

Objective

The Environmental Research Group will support WHO through producing a report examining the barriers and facilitators healthcare professionals face when communicating air pollution as a health risk to their patients. This work will involve consolidating insights gathered from surveys and interviews with general practitioners (GPs). The goal of this report is to identify effective strategies for supporting health care professionals in delivering accurate, evidence-based and actionable information on air pollution to their patients. This in turn, will help reduce patient’s exposure to air pollution and improve their health outcomes.

The Environmental Research Group will build on its long-standing experience and expertise in engaging a diverse range of stakeholders, including health care professionals to communicate the health risk of air pollution using evidence-based information.

WHO Air Quality Guidelines (WHO AQG), published in 2021, provide evidence-informed recommendations on the levels of air quality necessary to protect public health worldwide and to guide policies and actions to improve air quality. WHO continues supporting Member States in their efforts to reduce air pollution and protect health.

Rapid developments in the area of innovative approaches, such as big data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are increasingly important in efforts to address issues around air pollution and health. In recent years, AI has been applied for different objectives such as web scraping, automatic data extraction from big dataset, draft language summaries, developing search strategy and systematic reviews, just to name a few related to public health research. In the field of air pollution AI was used for concentration estimates, low-cost sensors, indoor air quality, and the assessment of population exposures. AI seems very promising to decrease time and labour costs, as well the establishment of reliable monitoring big data platform and early warning systems. These advances present new opportunities but also challenges. To enable effective implementation, it is important to define and understand the basic concepts, application opportunities and potential impacts, as well as limitations and potential risks.

Objective

The Environmental Research Group will support WHO through producing a report on opportunities and challenges related to AI and big data and associated methodologies in air pollution and health. This will present the basic concepts, current and future applications, benefits, risks and limitations. The focus will be on applications related to air pollution exposure monitoring and modelling, health epidemiology, health risk assessment and systematic reviews. Challenges will relate to issues such as data privacy, ethical considerations, regulation and communication. The designated institution will use its long-standing experience, broad expertise and comprehensive network of domain specialists to deliver this report and associated materials.

WHO Air Quality Guidelines (WHO AQG), published in 2021, provide evidence-informed recommendations on the levels of air quality necessary to protect public health worldwide and to guide policies and actions to improve air quality. Following the publication of the WHO AQG, WHO ECEH developed technical documents and tools to support implementation of the new guidelines and evidence-informed policy making in countries.

Sustained efforts are needed to further advance the evidence and the methods applied in air pollution and health epidemiology. One of the challenges is exposure measurement error in air pollution epidemiological studies, which can introduce bias in health effect estimation. This issue has been discussed in the earlier WHO reports, such as Health risks of air pollution in Europe (HRAPIE) and Review of evidence of health aspects of air pollution (REVIHAAP).

Objective

The Environmental Research Group will support WHO through producing a report on measurement error in air pollution epidemiology, building on its long-standing experience and expertise and the engagement in relevant processes/initiatives, such as in Committee on the medical effects of air pollutants (COMEAP), as well as prior involvement in the relevant WHO projects. 

Air pollution remains a major environmental risk to health globally. Several millions of deaths are attributable to air pollution every year, including more than 500 000 in the WHO European Region. The relevance of air quality and health agenda is reflected in global and regional WHO policy frameworks, including WHA Resolutions on air pollution and health (WHA 68.8), the WHO global strategy on health, environment and climate change (WHO, 2019), and the forthcoming updated roadmap for an enhanced global response to the adverse health effects of air pollution. In the WHO European Region, air quality and health is priority in environment and health, as reconfirmed in the Declaration of the Seventh Ministerial Conference on Environment and Health, held in Budapest, Hungary in 2023.

Objective

The Environmental Research Group will support WHO’s work on air quality and health through contributing to the development, dissemination, and promotion of relevant thematic WHO resources to advance the knowledge on different aspects of air pollution and health and to facilitate evidence-informed policies and actions in Member States of the WHO European Region.