New directions in global environmental health

Abstract

BACKGROUND AND AIM: The COVID-19 pandemic is challenging the world’s economic and health systems and exemplifies the degree of global interdependencies, the problems in the governance of global crises and the need of preparedness for global health threats. The outbreak of COVID-19 highlighted the links between the occurrence of new infections, the environment and climate at a global scale and the need for a planetary health perspective and trans-disciplinary approaches. The pandemic brought forward considerable health inequities globally METHODS: The new post-pandemic global settings bring forward overarching topics that have not been efficiently addressed: research needs for policy development, locally and globally; development of transdisciplinary research; implementation science for long-standing global problems; global ethics; new approaches in global public health governance. RESULTS:The pandemic has profoundly affected global society in multiple ways, introducing entirely new challenges and accelerating ongoing trends. The pandemic has highlighted the deep interconnections between problems typically studied in isolation or that previously were situated at the periphery of environmental epidemiology. There is a need to develop research and action on multiple levels. For example, air pollution, chemical pollution, or nature-based solutions must be addressed locally in cities. We should also address them at a global level: global air-pollution in relation to decarbonisation, the effects of global pollution and loss of biodiversity on ecosystems and human health. LMICs are disproportionately impacted by environmental pollution because of the lack of environmental policies and export of contaminants from high-income countries. The urgency of responding to the pandemic brought into prominence the need for international collaboration to develop actionable knowledge to emergencies that will require research in understudied populations and understudied thematic areas. CONCLUSIONS:The dramatic changes occurring in a short time will affect research in environmental epidemiology in the long term and the role of environmental epidemiology on a global scale. KEYWORDS: global epidemiology, covid-19, international collaboration