November news about Environment, Climate and Health

8 November 2017

Good news

Rachael Rodney was married on 7 October 2017, and finalised and submitted revisions for her PhD on 9 October 2017! PhD is now confirmed as passed. Congratulations Rachael!!

Dharshi Thangarajah has been accepted onto the MAE program and we are looking forward to seeing her around NCEPH a bit more.

 

Papers accepted/published:

Tremlett H, Lucas RM. An ‘epidemic’ of multiple sclerosis and falling infection rates? Reflecting on comparisons made and the rising MS incidence in Bach’s NEJM 2002 Figure. European Journal of Neurology (accepted 16 Oct 2017)

Lal A, Marshall JM, Benscop J, Brock A, Baker MG, Hales S, French NP. A Bayesian spatio-temporal framework to identify outbreaks and examine environmental and social risk factors for infectious diseases monitored by routine surveillance. Spatial and Spatio-Temporal Epidemiology (accepted 18th October 2017)

Korda RJ, Clements MS, Armstrong BK, Law H, Guiver T, Anderson PR, Trevenar SM, Kirk MD. Risk of cancer associated with residential exposure to asbestos insulation: a whole-population cohort study. Lan Pub Hlth 2017; 2: e522–e528.

 

Presentations

Kathryn Bowen was a panellist at the Lancet Climate Countdown Report launch at University of Melbourne.

 

Grants

Kathryn Bowen has been awarded a grant from GIZ (German Development Agency) to provide Technical Backstopping for Mainstreaming of climate change adaptation planning into the Thai public health sector

Aparna Lal has been awarded a grant from the Centre of Biodiversity Analysis to lead a new collaboration with CSIRO for spatial modelling of biodiversity-health linkages.

 

Other

Kathryn Bowen has been asked by UNDP to support the development of a UNDP-WHO project on Building Resilience of Health Systems in Pacific Island LDCs (Kiribati, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu and Vanuatu) to Climate Change. Funded by USAID.

Kathryn Bowen has been nominated by the Australian government (DoEE) as a Lead Author for 3 separate chapters for the AR6 WGII. Final decision from IPCC is expected in Feb 2018.

 Robyn Lucas was the external examiner for the NZ College of Public Health Medicine and is the Lead Examiner for the Australasian Faculty of Public Health Medicine, with both sets of oral examinations in October.

Robyn Lucas successfully completed the 35km walk for mitochondrial disease – 7 hours and 15 mins!

Kirk MD, Smurthwaite K, Braunig J, Trevenar S, D’Este C, Lucas R, Lal A, Korda R, Clements A, Mueller J, Armstrong B. The Per- and poly-Fluorinated Alkyl Substances (PFAS) Health Study Systematic Literature Review. Australian National University October 2017.

The federal Department of Health provided the comprehensive systematic review on PFAS to a high-level expert panel to inform their official assessment of the human health effects of PFAS.