Application of Environmental Epidemiology in Risk Assessment and Public Health Decision-making: A HESI Initiative

Abstract

Application of Environmental Epidemiology in Risk Assessment and Public Health Decision-making: A HESI InitiativeIn Fall 2017, the Health and Environmental Sciences Institute (HESI) launched a project designed to start a dialogue around the issues that limit the full utilization of environmental epidemiology in risk assessment and regulatory decision-making. The purpose of this project is to identify factors limiting the use of epidemiological data in public health policy and regulatory decision-making, and to design solutions to facilitate that incorporation in risk assessment. The project engages representatives from government, academia, and industry with a wide range of expertise in epidemiology, toxicology, risk assessment, and exposure science. This project aims to improve practices for the collection of human data to meet the standards of the practice of epidemiology and to further contribute to the rigorous characteristics required to provide confidence in science-based assessments for regulatory decision-making.To fulfill this mission, this HESI committee started with an exploratory phase, based on the organization of four focus groups whose goals were to 1) foster dialogue among epidemiologists, risk assessors, exposure scientists, statisticians, and other experts; 2) identify barriers to the optimal integration of epidemiological data into quantitative risk assessment; and 3) propose consensus solutions for a positive impact in this space.Thanks to the active engagement of participants, these interactive meetings identified specific areas of focus, such as funding attribution, data access, insufficient cross-training, and lack of cross-disciplinary communication, where improvements could be made to ultimately increase the use of environmental epidemiology in risk assessment. Salient issues and the lessons learned from these focus groups will be presented, as well as the concrete steps taken by the HESI committee, and their recommendations to increase the relevance of epidemiological data to quantitative risk assessment.