Search

AIMS: We provide an overview of nationwide environmental data available for Denmark and its linkage potentials to individual-level records with the aim of promoting research on the potential impact of the local surrounding environment on human health.BACKGROUND: Researchers in Denmark have unique opportunities for conducting large population-based studies treating the entire Danish population as one big, open and dynamic cohort based on nationally complete population and health registries. So far, most research in this area has utilised individual- and family-level information to study the clustering of disease in families, comorbidities, risk of, and prognosis after, disease onset, and social gradients in disease risk. Linking environmental data in time and space to individuals enables novel possibilities for studying the health effects of the social, built and physical environment.METHODS: We describe the possible linkage between individuals and their local surrounding environment to establish the exposome - that is, the total environmental exposure of an individual over their life course.CONCLUSIONS: The currently available nationwide longitudinal environmental data in Denmark constitutes a valuable and globally rare asset that can help explore the impact of the exposome on human health.

Overcrowding in densely populated urban areas is increasingly becoming an issue for mental health disorders. Yet, only few studies have examined the association between overcrowding in cities and physiological stress responses. Thus, this study employed wearable sensors (a wearable camera, an Empatica E4 wristband and a smartphone-based GPS) to assess the association between overcrowding and human physiological stress response in four types of urban contexts (green space, transit space, commercial space, and blue space). A case study with 26 participants was conducted in Salzburg, Austria. We used Mask R-CNN to detect elements related to overcrowding such as human crowds, sitting facilities, vehicles and bikes from first-person video data collected by wearable cameras, and calculated a change score (CS) to assess human physiological stress response based on galvanic skin response (GSR) and skin temperature from the physiological data collected by the wristband, then this study used statistical and spatial analysis to assess the association between the change score and the above elements. The results demonstrate the feasibility of using sensor-based measurement and quantitative analysis to investigate the relationship between human stress and overcrowding in relation to different urban elements. The findings of this study indicate the importance of considering human crowds, sitting facilities, vehicles and bikes to assess the impact of overcrowding on human stress at street level.

Additional file 2: Table S1. comparation between GWR model and Ordinary least-squares (OLS) model.

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-sjp-10.1177_14034948231178076 for Perspectives on environment and health research in Denmark by Henriette T. Horsdal, Marianne G. Pedersen, Jörg Schullehner, Cecilie S. Østergaard, John J. Mcgrath, Esben Agerbo, Allan Timmermann, Ane Marie Closter, Jørgen Brandt, Jesper H. Christensen, Lise M. Frohn, Camilla Geels, Matthias Ketzel, Jibran Khan, Pia V. Ørby, Yulia Olsen, Gregor Levin, Jens-Christian Svenning, Kristine Engemann, Steen Gyldenkærne, Birgitte Hansen, Ole Hertel, Clive E. Sabel, Christian Erikstrup, Torben Sigsgaard and Carsten B. Pedersen in Scandinavian Journal of Public Health

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-sjp-10.1177_14034948231178076 for Perspectives on environment and health research in Denmark by Henriette T. Horsdal, Marianne G. Pedersen, Jörg Schullehner, Cecilie S. Østergaard, John J. Mcgrath, Esben Agerbo, Allan Timmermann, Ane Marie Closter, Jørgen Brandt, Jesper H. Christensen, Lise M. Frohn, Camilla Geels, Matthias Ketzel, Jibran Khan, Pia V. Ørby, Yulia Olsen, Gregor Levin, Jens-Christian Svenning, Kristine Engemann, Steen Gyldenkærne, Birgitte Hansen, Ole Hertel, Clive E. Sabel, Christian Erikstrup, Torben Sigsgaard and Carsten B. Pedersen in Scandinavian Journal of Public Health

Cities are highly complex, inter-connected social-ecological systems, encompassing social, built and natural/ semi-natural components. They interact with their surrounding extra-urban areas at varying scales, from peri- urban and rural to global. Space is a valuable commodity in cities. However, in most instances, city planners tend to think about interventions only within cities and rarely about the wider connected domains outside. Yet, considering the wider spatial context, including space outside of the city boundaries, may open up opportunities to achieve substantially greater benefit for city residents without sacrificing valuable space, leading to more sustainable city design for people and the environment. In this paper we discuss the intra-extra-urban flows which connect cities to their wider airsheds, watersheds, biosheds and resourcesheds, which in turn interact with their peoplesheds. For each domain, we illustrate the processes and the scales they operate at, and discuss the implications for optimum location of nature-based solutions (NBS) to address urban challenges. We suggest that integrating knowledge about these multiple sheds can inform holistic design of NBS to deliver greater benefit for city residents. This takes into account the synergies and multi-functional co-benefits which arise from a careful consideration of place and people, while minimising potential disbenefits and trade-offs.

Cities' increasing population and housing density have been associated with a higher risk of mental health problems, such as stress. This study employed wearable, personalised sensors (a wearable camera, Empatica 4 wristband and a smartphone-based GPS) to assess the association between overcrowding and human physiological stress response in four kinds of urban contexts (water area, transit area, green area, commercial area). This paper conducted a case study in Salzburg, Austria and recruited 26 participants. We used Mask R-CNN to detect human crowds, sitting facilities, vehicles and bikes from imagery and calculated a change score to assess human physiological stress responses based on galvanic skin response (GSR) and skin temperature from the wristband. Afterwards, we used statistical and spatial analysis to assess the relationships between the change score and the number of human crowds, sitting facilities, vehicles and bikes. This paper confirmed that natural contexts could mitigate the adverse effects of overcrowding and explored areas where human crowds, sitting facilities, vehicles and bikes are positively associated with humans' physiological stress responses. Lastly, we proposed urban design approaches to minimise overcrowding and benefit humans' mental health.

Public open space (POS) plays a significant role in fostering human health and wellbeing in cities. A major limitation of current research on POS and health is that there is little attention on the role of various urban features on people's mental health, in different urban context. This study employed wearable, personalised sensors (a wearable camera, Empatica 4 wristband and a GPS device) to measure human physiological responses to urban indicators, objectively. To do this, we selected six kinds of public open space (water area, transit area, green area, commercial area, motor traffic area and mixed office and residential area) and recruited 86 participants for an experimental study. Next, we detected urban features by using Microsoft Cognitive Services (MCS) and calculated a change score to assess human physiological stress responses based on galvanic skin response (GSR) and skin temperature from the wristband. Lastly, we applied a multi-method to examine the relationship between urban indicators and human physiological stress responses. The findings show that urban flow (vehicles, bikes and people), waterbodies, greenery and places to sit are associated with the changes of human physiological stress response. The findings indicate that the type of urban context may confound the effect of green and blue urban features; i.e., the effect on physiological stress response can be positive or negative depending on the context. The paper highlights the relevance of considering urban context in research on associations between urban features and stress response.

Urban green and blue spaces not only provide environmental benefits to the quality of city life, but also generate positive health effects for people living in cities. Recent studies advocate for the need to evaluate the therapeutic value of urban green and blue spaces. To achieve this goal, this study aims to measure how human respond to urban “green” and “blue” elements in different kinds of urban environment. We conducted a field experiment in Copenhagen municipality from June to September 2021.The experiment entailed using FrontRow wearable lifestyle camera, GPS tracker and Empatica 4 wristband as a sensor package to capture personal urban exposures and localised personal physiological responses to the urban environments. In this field experiment, volunteers (k=85) wore three sensors and walked through six urban sites (waterfront area/transit area/greenery area /commercial area/traffic area/residential area). On each site, the volunteers had a 5-minute rest followed by a 15-minute self-leading walk. In the end, our experiment collected images representing personal exposures to urban elements and the corresponding physiological responses. Focusing on the exposures to “Green” and “Blue” features, we took advantage of Microsoft API of cognitive service to detect the existence of urban “green” (e.g., tree/grass/flower/garden/bush) and urban “blue” (e.g., water/lake/fountain) in the collected images. Further, we analysed the spatial relationship between the distributions of “Green/Blue” features and human’s body responses in the six sites. Our findings indicate that the existence of “Green” and “blue” elements can effectively decrease the stress perceived from the surroundings. The study provides novel insights to investigating human health in different urban environments and highlights the value of green and blue spaces in promoting good health.

Supplemental material, supplementary_Methods_Data for Examining Spatial Variability in the Association Between Male Partner Alcohol Misuse and Intimate Partner Violence Against Women in Ghana: A GWR Analysis by Prince M. Amegbor, Ortis Yankey, Mark W. Rosenberg and Clive E. Sabel in Journal of Interpersonal Violence

Summary: The International Initiative on Spatial Lifecourse Epidemiology (ISLE) convened its first International Symposium on Lifecourse Epidemiology and Spatial Science at the Lorentz Center in Leiden, Netherlands, 16–20 July 2018. Its aim was to further an emerging transdisciplinary field: Spatial Lifecourse Epidemiology. This field draws from a broad perspective of scientific disciplines including lifecourse epidemiology, environmental epidemiology, community health, spatial science, health geography, biostatistics, spatial statistics, environmental science, climate change, exposure science, health economics, evidence-based public health, and landscape ecology. The participants, spanning 30 institutions in 10 countries, sought to identify the key issues and research priorities in spatial lifecourse epidemiology. The results published here are a synthesis of the top 10 list that emerged out of the discussion by a panel of leading experts, reflecting a set of grand challenges for spatial lifecourse epidemiology in the coming years. https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP4868

Research into health disparities has long recognized the importance of residential mobility as a crucial factor in determining health outcomes. However, a lack of connectivity between the health and mobility literatures has led to a stagnation of theory and application on the health side, which lacks the detail and temporal perspectives now seen as critical to understanding residential mobility decisions. Through a critical re-think of mobility processes with respect to health outcomes and an exploitation of longitudinal analytical techniques, we argue that health geographers have the potential to better understand and identify the relationship that residential mobility has with health.

The exposome, defined as the totality of an individual's exposures over the life course, is a seminal concept in the environmental health sciences. Although inherently geographic, the exposome as yet is unfamiliar to many geographers. This article proposes a place-based synthesis, genetic geographic information science (genetic GIScience), that is founded on the exposome, genome+, and behavome. It provides an improved understanding of human health in relation to biology (the genome+), environmental exposures (the exposome), and their social, societal, and behavioral determinants (the behavome). Genetic GIScience poses three key needs: first, a mathematical foundation for emergent theory; second, process-based models that bridge biological and geographic scales; third, biologically plausible estimates of space?time disease lags. Compartmental models are a possible solution; this article develops two models using pancreatic cancer as an exemplar. The first models carcinogenesis based on the cascade of mutations and cellular changes that lead to metastatic cancer. The second models cancer stages by diagnostic criteria. These provide empirical estimates of the distribution of latencies in cellular states and disease stages, and maps of the burden of yet to be diagnosed disease. This approach links our emerging knowledge of genomics to cancer progression at the cellular level, to individuals and their cancer stage at diagnosis, and to geographic distributions of cancer in extant populations. These methodological developments and exemplar provide the basis for a new synthesis in health geography: genetic GIScience.

Linking environmental, socioeconomic and health datasets provides new insights into the potential associations between climate change and human health and wellbeing, and underpins the development of decision support tools that will promote resilience to climate change, and thus enable more effective adaptation. This paper outlines the challenges and opportunities presented by advances in data collection, storage, analysis, and access, particularly focusing on "data mashups". These data mashups are integrations of different types and sources of data, frequently using open application programming interfaces and data sources, to produce enriched results that were not necessarily the original reason for assembling the raw source data. As an illustration of this potential, this paper describes a recently funded initiative to create such a facility in the UK for use in decision support around climate change and health, and provides examples of suitable sources of data and the purposes to which they can be directed, particularly for policy makers and public health decision makers.

The relationship between income and mortality is explored by examining mortality in each income decile and income source (from earnings, government or capital). Swedish individual level income data was analysed for approximately 6.5 million adults. The quality of our data is unprecedented for this type of study, in terms of size and completeness of population coverage and death registration. The results suggest that inequalities in mortality are marked even in Sweden, one of the affluent countries where the effects of health inequalities are assumed to be lowest worldwide. The only income source that was associated with beneficial outcomes for all population groups was earnings. Welfare payments, often associated with illness, are associated with higher mortality, particularly for men. Capital income (our 'wealth' indicator) generally reduces the risk of mortality but increases the risk for some younger groups.

Background Climate change is a global threat to health and wellbeing. Here we provide findings of an international research project investigating the health and wellbeing impacts of policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in urban environments. Methods Five European and two Chinese city authorities and partner academic organisations formed the project consortium. The methodology involved modelling the impact of adopted urban climate-change mitigation transport, buildings and energy policy scenarios, usually for the year 2020 and comparing them with business as usual (BAU) scenarios (where policies had not been adopted). Carbon dioxide emissions, health impacting exposures (air pollution, noise and physical activity), health (cardiovascular, respiratory, cancer and leukaemia) and wellbeing (including noise related wellbeing, overall wellbeing, economic wellbeing and inequalities) were modelled. The scenarios were developed from corresponding known levels in 2010 and pre-existing exposure response functions. Additionally there were literature reviews, three longitudinal observational studies and two cross sectional surveys. Results There are four key findings. Firstly introduction of electric cars may confer some small health benefits but it would be unwise for a city to invest in electric vehicles unless their power generation fuel mix generates fewer emissions than petrol and diesel. Second, adopting policies to reduce private car use may have benefits for carbon dioxide reduction and positive health impacts through reduced noise and increased physical activity. Third, the benefits of carbon dioxide reduction from increasing housing efficiency are likely to be minor and co-benefits for health and wellbeing are dependent on good air exchange. Fourthly, although heating dwellings by in-home biomass burning may reduce carbon dioxide emissions, consequences for health and wellbeing were negative with the technology in use in the cities studied. Conclusions The climate-change reduction policies reduced CO2 emissions (the most common greenhouse gas) from cities but impact on global emissions of CO2 would be more limited due to some displacement of emissions. The health and wellbeing impacts varied and were often limited reflecting existing relatively high quality of life and environmental standards in most of the participating cities; the greatest potential for future health benefit occurs in less developed or developing countries. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12940-016-0097-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

The authors regret that they failed to state a source of funding for this paper. In addition to the financial support of the European Commission via the 7th RTD Framework Program project URGENCHE (grant agreement no. 265114), the authors gratefully acknowledge financial support from the European Commission via the Horizon 2020 project ICARUS (grant agreement no. 690105). The authors would like to apologise for any inconvenience caused.