New grants/funding

Effectiveness of Antioxidant Supplementation to protect cardiorespiratorY health from BREATHing pollutEd air in ASIA (EASY-BREATHE-ASIA) – Vardoulakis, Lucas et al

Keynote and invited presentations

Aparna Lal was the invited dinner speaker for the Annual Surveying and Spatial Science Institute Conference, Goulburn, 25-27^th September, 2019

Aparna Lal was part of the plenary on “Droughts and Flooding Rains” at the Annual Public Health Association of Australia Conference, Adelaide 17-19^th September, 2019

Other conference presentations

Ripon Adhikary (Phd) and Rose Hosking (Honours) presented their Environmental Health research projects at the RSPH student Conference, 11^th September 2019.

Richardson A, Lal A. A spatially-explicit microsimulation analysis of the proposed sugar tax on population health in the ACT at the Applied Statistics and Policy Analysis Conference, Wagga 05 - 06 September, 2019.

Outreach and engagement

Jo Lane presented a workshop to the Taking Control Group at the ACT MS Society on “The Compassionate Mind” by Professor Paul Gilbert on 14/9/2019.

Jo Lane presented a seminar titled “It’s time to de-stress: The why and how” for the National Collections and Marine Infrastructure/CSIRO Forum at the University of Canberra on 19/9/2019.   

Media releases/interest

Alice Richardson and Aparna Lal were part of a story related to the sugar tax project in the Canberra Times.

https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/6371575/sugar-tax-harder-on-canberras-poor-than-the-rich/?cs=14225&fbclid=IwAR1YEEizaUl0K_juyXPC55ZeUb7zVWKAfUm-UMURmGNQrRfLSZKX2drz4W8

Papers accepted/published:

1. Dhamrait GK, Panchal K, Fleury NJ, Abel TN, Ancliffe MK, Crew RC, Croft K, Fernandez BO, Minnion M, Hart PH, Lucas RM, Mark PJ, Feelisch M, Weller RB, Matthews V, Gorman S. Characterising nitric oxide-mediated metabolic benefits of low-dose ultraviolet radiation: A focus on brown adipose tissue. Diabetologia (accepted 30 August 2019)
2. Lal A, Swaminathan A, Holani T. Spatial clusters of Clostridium difficile infection and an association with neighbourhood socio-economic disadvantage in the Australian Capital Territory, 2004-2014. Infection, idessea and health (accepted September 2019).
3. Bagheri N, Konings P, Wangdi K, Parkinson A, Mazumdar, S, Sturgiss E, Lal A, Douglas K, Glasgow N. Identifying hotspots of type-2 diabetes risk using general practice data and geospatial analysis: an approach to inform policy and practice. Australian Journal of Primary Health (accepted September 2019).\
4. Morawska L., Miller W., Riley M., Vardoulakis S., Zhu Y., Marks G., Garnawat P., Kumar P., Thynell M., 2019. Towards Urbanome the genome of the city to enhance the form and function of future cities. Nature Communications 10, 4014.
5. Almendra R., Santana P., Mitsakou C., Heaviside C., Samoli E., Rodopoulou S., Katsouyanni K., Vardoulakis S., 2019. Cold-related mortality in three European metropolitan areas: Athens, Lisbon and London. Implications for health promotion. Urban Climate Urban 30, 100532.

Progress on research projects

PFAS Health Study

The pilot for the survey has now closed, with planning underway for the mail-out of invitations to the main survey to the exposed communities. Jo Lane has come on board to assist the study team in the event participants call our toll free number and are identified as being distressed. The data linkage study is on track with most of the ethics submissions being approved, we are now seeking approval from data custodians before the data linkage can begin at the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.