Health Effects Institute Annual Conference

Chairs: Jennifer Peel, Colorado State University, and Kiros Berhane, Columbia University

Accountability, or evaluating the effectiveness of interventions to improve air quality and public health, remains a topic of high interest. Although there have been some successes, showing effectiveness — particularly at increasingly lower air pollution levels — is challenging. This session will track recent progress, including novel statistical approaches, big data, and data observatories. Speakers will discuss the value of accountability evidence for testing causality, and explore what approaches are needed for future research.

Chairs: Barbara Hoffmann, University of Düsseldorf, and David Savitz, Brown University

Globally, neurological disorders represent the second leading cause of death. While increasing evidence has emerged demonstrating an association between air pollution exposure and brain health throughout the life course, important research gaps remain. This session will provide an overview of the relationship between air pollution and neurological effects in childhood and adolescence, and neurodegenerative disease in adulthood, as well as the physiological impacts on the brain that have been observed recently using neuroimaging techniques.

Chairs: David Savitz, Brown University, and Jim Merchant, University of Iowa

This session will look back at 40 years of HEI history and ahead at the next steps in implementing the new Strategic Plan 2020–2025. We will summarize HEI’s new research on accountability, exposure assessment, global health, and energy, and other new research initiatives.

Chairs: Jana Milford, University of Colorado, and Michael Jerrett, University of California, Los Angeles

A growing body of research has examined inequitable distribution of air pollution exposure across racial and socioeconomic groups in the United States. Questions remain about which population groups are inequitably exposed and likely to benefit from air quality improvements. This session will provide an overview of social determinants of health and exposure in the United States, air pollution inequality research to date, and applications in epidemiological research and policy decisions.

Chairs: Frank Kelly, King’s College London, and Jeffrey Brook, University of Toronto

Evidence for the health effects of particulate matter (PM) has led regulatory agencies to establish mass-based ambient air quality standards for PM. Despite significant earlier efforts, it remains unclear whether some chemical constituents or physical characteristics of the PM mixture are of greater public health concern than others. This session will discuss the state of the science related to PM characteristics, including key open questions related to whether regulations targeting specific sources or components of PM might protect public health more effectively than continuing to target PM mass as a whole.

Chairs: Allen Robinson, Carnegie Mellon University, and David Foster, University of Wisconsin, Madison

The contribution of ultrafine particle (UFP) exposure to health effects of the air pollutant mixture is an unresolved issue in air pollution research. A number of recent reviews of the UFP literature continue to point to many of the same challenges in measurement, exposure assessment, and epidemiological studies that were identified by HEI’s review in 2013. This session will summarize those challenges, discuss progress, and identify issues going forward that need to be resolved by targeted research.