Projects

Promoting climate health risk assessment using big data and emerging technologies

Global climate change is occurring at an unparalleled scale, and robust evidence on its health impacts is urgently needed by policymakers, healthcare systems, and the public. My work has played a pivotal role in highlighting that global climate change poses widespread threats to human health.

Despite substantial progress in the field of climate change and health, several critical questions and methodological challenges persist:

1. Sparse coverage of environmental monitoring stations hinders accurate exposure assessment and may lead to biased estimates of health impacts.
2. People are often simultaneously exposed to multiple environmental exposures (e.g., heat, air pollution, humidity), however, limited evidence is available for the combined health effects of these co-occurring exposures.
3. There remains a significant gap in understanding the contribution of climate change to the mortality burden associated with environmental exposures.
4. There are limited health data driven climate-health tools to communicate and intervene on these climate health risks.

This Investigator Grant program aims to address these gaps by advancing climate health assessment through the integration of big data analytics, emerging technologies, and innovative methodologies with the ultimate goal of generating robust epidemiological evidence that can directly inform the development of policies and guidelines aimed at preventing the adverse health impacts of climate change.

My research program will focus on four themes:

• Theme 1: Improve environmental exposure assessment;
• Theme 2: Advance health impact and climate attribution assessment;
• Theme 3: Develop practical intervention tools to reduce health impacts of climate change;
• Theme 4: Strengthen research capacity.

Through these initiatives, the program will generate more precise evidence, support capacity building, and ultimately improve population health outcomes in the face of global climate change

Plain language summary

This Investigator Grant research program will deliver highly impactful outcomes, including ground-breaking advancements in policy guidance related to global climate change. It will generate critical new evidence to directly inform public health policies and interventions, pioneer innovative methodologies in environmental epidemiology, and further reinforce Australia’s position as a global leader in this field.

This Project is funded through an NHMRC Investigator grant.

Towards safeguarding maternal and child health from the impacts of bushfire smoke

Bushfire smoke poses a growing threat to maternal and child health in Australia and beyond, yet critical gaps remain, especially around exposure windows during pregnancy, long-term child health outcomes, and actionable protective strategies. My vision is to generate timely, high-impact evidence to guide protective action in bushfire-affected regions, establishing Australia as a global leader in protecting maternal and child health in a warming, fire-prone world.

As an internationally recognised leader in environmental health, I have led paradigm-shifting research at the interface of climate, air quality, and children’s health. My work has redefined bushfire smoke exposure assessment and health risk estimation. I have led large-scale projects across NHMRC, Horizon EU, and other national and international platforms, ensuring translation into policy and practice.

Over the next five years, my transformative program will generate foundational scientific knowledge, tools, and guidance central to safeguarding maternal and child health in Australia and informing policy beyond its borders. This Investigator Grant will deliver a fully integrated program with four interlinked themes:

1. Producing real-time, high-resolution bushfire smoke exposure data across Australia using advanced deep ensemble learning;
2. Quantifying the effects of maternal exposure on newborn and child health using entire-of-population linked datasets;
3. Developing living clinical guidelines, health communication tools, and targeted policy recommendations; and
4. Building national capacity and advancing bushfire epidemiology as a crucial new field.

Ambitious yet feasible, this program is anchored in Australia’s public health priorities and backed by strong infrastructure and partnerships. It will enable protection and prevention from the immediate and long-term effects of bushfire smoke exposure, improving health during pregnancy and childhood.

Plain language summary

With bushfires grow more frequent and severe, especially in Australia, their smoke poses rising health risks. This research program addresses key gaps in understanding impacts on mothers and children, focusing on exposure, health effects, and prevention. Leveraging my leading expertise in environmental health, it will generate evidence, guide interventions, shape policy, and build capacity to reduce risks and protect vulnerable populations in Australia and beyond.

This Project is funded through an NHMRC Investigator grant.

Addressing the public health challenge of mould in homes

Mould affects one third of homes in Australia, compromising building integrity and public health.

Starting in June 2026, this project aims to improve public health, focusing on people living with respiratory conditions or compromised immune systems, by reducing mould exposure in homes.

This NHMRC Synergy Grant brings together a team of world-class experts in public health, epidemiology, clinical medicine, architectural science, biostatistics, environmental health, and behavioural psychology. The researchers will complete an ambitious four-stage research program, including:

• Conducting a nation-wide survey to provide insights, for the first time, into mould prevalence and its impact across Australia's diverse climate zones;
• Using cutting-edge behavioural change models to create interventions that work for the communities that need them;
• Completing a trial to evaluate the effectiveness of these interventions
• Developing population models to evaluate intervention effectiveness in Australia’s housing policy environment.

This project is funded by the NHMRC Synergy scheme and is administered by The University of Melbourne.

Reconstructing long-term bushfire smoke PM2.5 exposure across Australia for climate change and safer air research

Bushfire smoke is a major air pollution problem in Australia, but we do not yet have good information about how much smoke people have been exposed to over many decades. This project will rebuild Australia’s historical bushfire smoke pollution levels from 1960 onwards using computer modelling and existing environmental data. It will show how smoke exposure has changed over time and across regions, and provide a stronger evidence base for future health research, climate adaptation, and air quality protection.

This project is supported by the NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence Centre for Safe Air.

Building Resilience to the Impacts of Heatwaves in Australia (BRIHA) Consortium

The aim of this project is to explore the wide-ranging health impacts of power outages during extreme heat events, the current adaptative capacity of population to manage heat related health risk from power outages, the challenges and opportunities for strengthening community health resilience to power outages in the context of climate change.

The BRIHA Consortium is a multi-institutional research initiative led by Professor Peng Bi, University of Adelaide, and is supported by the Natural Hazards Research Australia.

Predicting lethal humidity and associated excess mortality

Humid heat waves are one of the largest emerging hazards as the planet warms. However, there is still limited understanding of the excess mortality associated with humid heat in data-sparse regions of the globe, including Southeast Asia and Africa, which are likely to be the worst hit. Machine learning alongside detailed urban modelling provides a new opportunity to quantify and predict potential excess mortality across the globe. This work will produce a global early warning system for deadly heat waves.

This project is supported by a grant from the Minderoo Foundation.

Mortality risks associated with wildfire smoke

This subcontract supports Monash University in conducting a meta-regression analysis as part of a broader research initiative funded by Wellcome. The primary goal of the initiative is to improve the integration of air quality impacts into economic models estimating the social cost of greenhouse gases.

This project is funded through a Wellcome Trust funded research project ‘Climate, Economics and Health: Adding air quality impacts into social cost of carbon estimates’, which is led by Dr Kevin Cromar, New York University.

Health effects of heat in Southeast Asia: Behavioural and structural climate change adaptation interventions in semi-rural Malaysia

Increasing heat exposure will profoundly influence human health in the following decades, particularly in climate-vulnerable countries in Southeast Asia. In Malaysia, heat-related mortality is projected to increase by 295 percent by 2030. More heatwaves will increase, as will severe rainstorms and tropical cyclones. To strengthen heat adaptation in Southeast Asia, researchers will evaluate simple behavioural and structural interventions that have the potential to protect vulnerable communities from the health effects of extreme heat. Addressing climate change and health requires fundamental behavioural changes on individuals and communities to prevent them from the adverse health effects of heat. The research team will introduce interventions that will strengthen heat health literacy and fluency for individuals and communities (behavioural intervention). Climate change adaptation is critical for vulnerable groups to cope with rising average temperatures and severe heat waves. As a structural intervention we will test a passive cooling (cool roof) technology to decrease indoor exposure to extreme heat. The SEACO health and demographic surveillance system (HDSS) serves as a solid foundation to conduct these interventions, equipping it with individual, home-based, and community-based sensors to enable cutting-edge climate change and health research, focusing on heat effects on health.

This project is led by Prof Tin Tin Su, Monash University Malaysia, and is funded through a Wellcome Trust grant.

Centre for Safe Air – NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence

The Centre for Safe Air brings together researchers from around Australia with a focus on air quality and health. Our vision is for a healthier community through cleaner air, underpinned by evidence-informed policy and practice.

Website: https://safeair.org.au

The Centre for Safe Air is a NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence led by Professor Fay Johnston at the Menzies Institute for Medical Research, University of Tasmania.

Health assessment of bushfire smoke on children and pregnancy outcomes

Children are vital to a country’s present and its future. Healthy births and children are more likely to become healthy adults have long life expectancy. Recently, large and unprecedented bushfires (or wildfires) have been occurring frequently in many regions of the world, with grave consequences, particularly for Australia. However, there is a significant knowledge gap on whether children and pregnancy outcomes are impacted by bushfire smoke in Australia.

The aim of this Investigator Grant program is to provide crucial scientific evidence based on big data analysis, which is much needed to minimise harm from bushfire smoke on children and pregnancy outcomes for both Australian and international communities. The four broad themes proposed for this research program are to:

1. Estimate bushfire smoke using a mixed ensemble machine learning model and chemical transport model with remote sensing, weather data, land use information and an emission inventory;
2. Evaluate the health impacts of bushfire smoke on children’s mortality and morbidity and identify modification factors [e.g., sex and pre-existing chronic diseases];
3. Assess the impacts of bushfire smoke on pregnancy outcomes, and identify the vulnerable exposure windows during pregnancy that increases susceptibility; and
4. Enhance capacity building and advance the development of bushfire epidemiology.

This research program represents a transformative leap forward in our ability to inform better preparation for the risks of bushfire smoke on children and pregnancy outcomes. The outcomes of this research program will result in reduced hazard of bushfire smoke, leading to substantial gains in population and environmental health. Importantly, this work will allow for the expansion and sustainability of my team by generating opportunities for new PhD students, as well as providing avenues for career advancement for new and current postdoctoral researchers.

New knowledge and research capacity for health impacts of global environmental change with big data, novel approach and new technology

Global environmental change is unprecedented in scale, and the evidence on its risks to population health is needed urgently by governments, health service-providers and individuals. I have made great contribution to the recognition that global environmental change (e.g. extreme weathers and air pollution) is ubiquitous health risk to the general, current and future, and their unequal effects around the world.

There are several key questions and methodology challenges in the field of global environmental change and health:

1. Most existing studies have disadvantages of small sample size and limited diversity by age, or sex, or ethnicity or country because of financial and practical constraints;
2. There are limited monitoring stations for environmental exposure (e.g., air pollution), which limits the environmental health risk assessment and results in biased effect estimates;
3. Although several countries have applied adaptation policies for environmental change, it is still unknown whether population have adapted to the health impacts of global environmental change (e.g., heatwaves), and how to evaluate the effectiveness of the adaptation strategies?
4. The bushfire season is getting longer and episodes of severe fires are becoming more frequent. It is still unclear about the health effects of exposure to bushfire air pollution; and
5. Asia Pacific region has the most serious air pollution and largest population in the world. However, there is limited evidence on the long-term health impacts of air pollution in this region.

This research project will fill above gaps, through improving the air pollution measurements and development of Multi-Country Multi-City Study for Environmental Health Effect and Cohort Consortium for Long-term Air Pollution Effects in Asia Pacific. This program will enable more accurate research findings and facilitate capacity building of health impacts of global environmental change, leading to greater benefit to populations.

InChildHealth: Identifying determinants for indoor air quality and their health impact in environments for children: measures to improve indoor air quality and reduce disease burdens

People spend most of their time in indoor environments. Understanding the links between indoor air quality and its effect on health is paramount to guarantee a safe indoor environment. The InChildHealth project integrated health, environmental, technical, and social sciences research to identify determinants for Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) and evaluate their impact in environments occupied by school children.

Led by Professor Heidi Salonen from Aalto University, the InChildHealth project involved a team of over 70 skilled and interdisciplinary research experts from microbiology, medical, social science, chemistry, heating and ventilation, and technology development fields. Two large sampling campaigns helped collect real-life indoor air quality data in different European climates. The data collected was compiled to create the InChildHealth Integrated Risk Assessment Tool, which provides information on the interactions between the sources, emissions, concentrations, exposure, doses, and disease for children.

One pivotal axis of this project was the development of user-friendly and low-cost monitoring technologies and strategies (technical and behavioural) to improve IAQ and reduce disease burdens. To maximize the reach of the InChildHealth project, large citizen science initiatives were implemented across in Austria, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Portugal, Spain, and the UK. The citizen science activities boosted the involvement of children within our research project and improved their understanding of indoor air quality and health.

The findings of this project will be disseminated as guidelines, recommendations, and training material. Such material will support the IAQ regulatory framework in schools, facilitate IAQ management, and broadly promote healthier indoors.

Large indoor and outdoor air quality measurement campaigns were conducted in 7 countries. The integrated exposure campaign focuses on monitoring indoor air quality to map daily exposure of children at schools, at homes, in sport centres and in transports. Data was collected during cold and warm seasons in Austria, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Portugal, Spain, and the UK.

Alongside air quality measurement campaigns, the team conducted one-year epidemiological studies in schools in three countries (Denmark, Finland, and Spain). The epidemiology study focused on monitoring and understanding the effects indoor air quality may have on school children health. Over 7,500 primary school children participated in the epidemiological campaign.

Project website: https://inchildhealth.eu

The InChildHealth project involved 15 partners across nine countries in Europe, the UK and Australia and €8M in funding. The project was co-funded by the European Health and Digital Executive Agency (HaDEA)as part of its “Indoor air quality and health” call under the Horizon Europe Framework Programme. This project also received funding from the UK Research and Innovation (URKI), the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI), and the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC).

Improving resilience to health risks of bushfire smoke and heat in Victoria

This project provided localised evidence and data of extreme heat and bushfire smoke across Victoria, mapping risks and health burdens; providing projected mortality/morbidity burdens under different scenarios; evaluating current adaptation strategies; and contributing to evidence-based adaptation guidelines.

This project was supported by a VicHealth grant.

HEI Australian wildfires and perinatal health risks

The unprecedented 2019–2020 wildfire season in Australia resulted in a declared state of emergency as bushfires (the Australian term for wildfires) burned ~5.8 million hectares, and nearby communities repeatedly experienced extreme levels of smoke. Extreme fire episodes will occur with higher frequency across Australia under climate change, as warmer temperatures lead to drier, more flammable conditions. Research on health burdens of wildfire smoke is limited, but existing evidence indicates impacts from short-term exposure, such as for hospital admissions. Evidence for a consistent association between wildfire smoke and adverse pregnancy outcomes remains understudied. Ambient particles from other typically urban sources have well-documented associations with birth outcomes. However, research including many HEI studies also show that the chemical composition of particles influences health consequences, indicating that risk estimates likely differ for wildfire PM2.5 versus PM2.5 total mass. To date, much of the literature has focused on a single fire episode and relatively small population. Other studies attempting to quantify long-term health impacts of smoke relied on concentration-response relationships for PM2.5 total mass, not wildfire-specific PM2.5.

Our long-term goal is to develop the methods and scientific evidence to estimate the health burden of wildfires, including for sensitive subpopulations, and to develop advanced fire modelling approaches for this work, thereby laying the foundation for related future research. To achieve these goals, we must address critical research needs for the topic of wildfires. Specifically, novel methodologies are needed to estimate how populations are exposed to wildfire smoke for locations and time periods without monitors, and to disentangle PM2.5 from wildfires from that of other sources. One key method to estimate exposure is advanced fire modelling; however, this itself requires innovation as improvements are needed in fire modelling systems.

CARE researchers used our innovative exposure methodology, estimating wildfire-specific PM2.5 throughout the continent, which allowed them to identify exposure gradients and health outcomes that are otherwise obscured through use of traditional monitor-based approaches.

This project was funded through a grant from the Health Effects Institute (RFA 20-1 Health Effects of Air Pollution).

Developing a global air quality alert and forecast system

The aim of this project was to develop a real-time online global air quality forecasting platform to deliver risk alerts and support policy-making, enabling proactive public actions.

Projects objectives:

• To create an accurate, global grid-based air pollution forecasting model for 5-day forecasts.
• To build a user-friendly visualization platform for interaction visualization and data sharing.
• To provide users with real-time alerts and timely notifications on poor air quality.

This project was funded through a seed funding grant from the NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence Centre for Safe Air.

Real-time prediction and communication of the risk patterns in CVD healthcare utilization and mortality driven by environmental stressors

The ambient environmental stressors, including air pollution, non-optimal temperature, and extreme weather events, on cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) is substantial, leading to increased healthcare utilization and mortality. This poses a great burden on our healthcare system, a challenge expected to escalate under a changing climate. However, there is a notable absence of a comprehensive early warning system capable of providing real-time information on the spatially joint risks arising from multiple environmental stressors. To address this gap, there is a pressing need for the development of an advanced and effective early warning system, integrating population-based epidemiological evidence, to proactively mitigate the burden of CVDs associated with these prominent environmental stressors.

Projects aims:

• To model and predict the spatiotemporal mortality and morbidity risks of cause-specific CVDs contributed by environmental stressors (ambient air pollution, non-optimal temperature, extreme weather events [i.e., floods, cyclones, and wildfires]) using advanced machining learning techniques.
• To identify susceptible subpopulations of various subtypes of cardiovascular disease under different environmental stressors and the major contributing environmental stressors.
• To develop an online application/platform to inform the magnitude and map of excess CVD risk driven by environmental stressors, as well as the main environmental stressors currently contributing to the risk.

This project was supported by an Australian Stroke and Heart Research Accelerator (ASHRA) grant.

Better Environment, Healthier Ageing

The ‘Better environment, Healthier Ageing’ project measured major environmental risk factors comprehensively, to evaluate their health impacts in older Australians, and to develop, evaluate and implement intervention strategies that can mitigate the adverse impacts. The project clarified the environmental enablers and barriers for achieving healthy ageing, and provide older Australians, aged care and health service providers with effective strategies to improve environmental health.

This project was supported by a MRFF – Dementia, Ageing and Aged Care Mission – Dementia, Ageing and Aged Care grant.

Climate change and human health in Asia: Current impacts, future risks, and health benefits of mitigation policies

Asia Pacific region (APR) will face profound stresses and challenges from climate change, if both average temperatures and extreme heat events increase as projected. There is an urgent need for a better quantitative understanding of the health effects of ambient temperatures, and this requires studies of both current health effects and scenario analyses of likely future health effects. These data would underpin future priority setting for climate adaptation and mitigation policies. To date, however, the study of the health effects of climate change remained largely outside the scope of public health research in APR, due to methodological complexities and data availability.

The overall aims of the Australian team were to:

1. Lead to establish an Asia Pacific Collaborative Network for Climate Change and Human Health to comprehensively assess the health impacts of climate change and ambient temperature; and
2. Generate essential scientific evidence needed by policy-makers and stakeholders for the development, prioritization and implementation of health protection strategies and policies regarding climate change.

The specific objectives of the project were to:

1. Assess the current health impacts of temperatures over time and space in APR;
2. Predict future impacts of temperature on health outcomes (mortality and morbidity);
3. Estimate current and future disease burden associated with temperatures in the APR under a range of climate and demographic change scenarios; and
4. Assess the health co-benefits from climate mitigation strategies, and to provide a justifiable basis for establishment of adequate climate change mitigation policies and public health actions.

This project was the largest to assess the health impacts of climate change and temperature in the APR. Knowledge arising from the project provided vital evidence for governmental policy on implementation of the mitigation and adaptation policies to address the health challenges associated with climate change.

This project was funded through a NHMRC e-ASIA Joint Research Program grant.

Multi-country study on health effects of bushfire air pollution

Catastrophic bushfires are a major natural disaster, causing serious air pollution. However, aligning bushfire air pollution and public health policies becomes a significant challenge, because limited studies are available on relationships between bushfire air pollution and human health, particularly for the prolonged exposure. The team characterized the nature of the relationships between bushfire air pollution and mortality/morbidity by developing a multi-country study; and estimating the burden of diseases attributed to bushfire air pollution. This project provided essential scientific evidence to policy-makers and stakeholders in the development, prioritization and implementation of health protection strategies and policies.

This project involved collaborators from several countries, and was supported by an ARC Discovery grant.

AI for estimating global bushfire smoke and its health burden

Our planet is facing more frequent, longer and unprecedented bushfires under climate change. Our aim is to apply AI for estimating the concentrations of bushfire smoke across the world and its global health burden, which is a vital prerequisite for guiding policy and the public health response.

There is a significant knowledge gap on the burden of bushfire smoke on human health. Major barriers include: 1) only sparsely distributed air pollution monitoring stations, which substantially limits the exposure assessment of bushfire smoke because it is highly variable; and 2) lack of global health data.

This project was funded through a Monash Data Futures Institute Seed Funding grant.

Estimating high-resolution global daily ambient and wildfire-related PM2.5 using machine learning models

In this study, the research team estimated the global daily concentrations of ambient PM2.5 and wildfire PM2.5 based on data of multiple predictors, such as meteorological factors, satellite observations (e.g. land use information, fire size and behaviour), and inputs from GEOS-Chem model.

Firstly, the researchers linked data of predictors with ground-based observations of PM2.5 from 11,404 monitor stations in 85 countries and regions during 2014−2019 (data already collected, Figure 1). Based on this dataset, they trained a machine learning model that can accurately predict daily ambient PM2.5 with data of predictors.

With the trained model, researchers then predicted global high-resolution (0.1° × 0.1° or finer) daily ambient PM2.5 from 2014 to 2019 based on data of predictors. Finally, the global wildfire PM2.5 at the same spatial and temporal resolution was estimated as the differences between the simulated ambient PM2.5 with and without fire events.

This project was funded through seed funding grant from the NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence Centre for Air Pollution, Energy and Health Research (CAR) Seed Funding grant.

The Fire Smoke Exposure Study

This aim of this project was to create a geodatabase of validated bushfire smoke exposures for all Australia from 2000 to present. The geodatabase built on our previous published list of validated events for NSW, WA and TAS (Johnston et al. 2011; Hanigan et al. 2018) and comprised national air pollution concentration surfaces (high spatial resolution maps) with new data and tools for linking exposure assessments with health outcomes data for studies of recent and historical smoke pollution events of fire smoke specific particulate matter (PM) concentrations. The project also developed capacity for near-real-time smoke modelling to inform public health warning systems.

The project was funded through a 2020 Seed Funding grant from the NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence Centre for Air Pollution, Energy and Health Research.

Global mortality burden attributable to short-term exposures to wildfire-related PM2.5

Air pollution from wildfire smoke (also called bushfire smoke in Australia) is an increasing public health concern in the context of climate change. This project provided the largest and most comprehensive assessment of global, regional and national mortality burden associated with short-term exposures to wildfire-related fine particles (PM2.5), the most important pollutant in wildfire smoke. Researchers quantified how many premature deaths per year were linked to the wildfire-related PM2.5 globally and in each country from 2000 to 2019. The team also evaluated the long-term trends and geographical and socioeconomic disparities in the mortality burden.

This project was funded through seed funding grant from the NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence Centre for Air Pollution, Energy and Health Research (CAR) Seed Funding grant.

Air Pollution and Mortality and Morbidity in adult Australians (APMMA Study): A large population based cohort study

This study investigated the link between respiratory and cardiovascular disease and mortality and exposure to long-term air pollution. Researchers used cutting edge methods to assign neighbourhood air pollution levels to a large cohort of NSW adults (n>265,000) previously recruited in the 45 and Up Study. The study results have been of utmost importance in setting outdoor air pollution standards and informing cost benefit analyses of air pollution control strategies.

This project was led by Prof Guy Marks and the University of New South Wales and was funded by a NHMRC Project grant.

NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence: Centre for Air Pollution, Energy and Health Research (CAR)

The CAR CRE brought together over 30 leading Australian and international researchers from diverse but related disciplines. Members were based in eight of Australia's most prestigious research institutions.

CAR supported teams of researchers to pursue collaborative projects and to develop their capacity by providing:

• seed funding and PhD top-up scholarships within one of our research themes
• symposia, workshops and seminars
• opportunities for researchers to collaborate training to the next generation of researchers
• translation of research findings to influence policy and practice in the real world

The work of the CAR CRE is continuing through its successor the Centre for Safe Air NHMRC CRE.

Improving the assessment of environmental health risks with new technology and novel approaches

This project examined key questions in assessment of environmental health risks, including:

1. how to improve the exposure assessment through new technology and advanced statistical models
2. whether health impacts of extreme weathers have changed over time
3. whether health impacts of air pollution are recoverable

The findings provided strategies and supportive evidence for policy decisions to mitigate the health impacts of extreme weathers and air pollution.

This project involved global collaborators from more 30 countries, and was supported by an NHMRC – Population Health Career Development Fellowship.

Environmental exposure, human behaviour and respiratory health for children with asthma

Calculations based on satellite-derived data were used to update the knowledge base for assessing childhood asthma in relation to residential green spaces and local climate. The research is of great importance due to the high prevalence of asthma among Australian children. Findings helped health workers allocate resources for preventing asthma attacks and provide evidence for urban planning.

This project involved collaborators from several countries, and was supported by an NHMRC Australian Public Health and Health Services Research Early Career Fellowship (ECF).

Initiating the Asia Pacific Cohort Consortium for Health Effects of Air Pollution

2019–2020

The overall goal of this project was to provide proof of concept for an external grant that aimed to establish an Asia Pacific Cohort Consortium for Health Effects of Air Pollution. The aim of the consortium is to characterize the nature of exposure response relationships for particulate matter with a diameter of less than 2.5μm (PM_2.5), nitrogen dioxide (NO₂), and ozone (O₃) in the low to high exposure range. We will seek to identify whether a minimum threshold in exposure level exists for
each of these air pollutants.

From Local Health to Global Climate: Assessing the air quality co-benefits of climate mitigation strategies in the U.S and China

Penn State–Monash Collaboration Development Fund (2019)

The goals of this collaborative project were to:

• assess state-level health co-benefits in China and the US using one standard modeling method to improve the comparability across strategies, regions and countries,
• assist climate change communication and integrated local decision making by creating a web-based, state-level visualization for the health co-benefits of various carbon mitigation pathways.

Specifically, researchers used an integrated assessment modeling method to assess the air quality and health impacts of a few selected mid-century carbon mitigation scenarios, i.e. the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSP), in China and United States at the state/province level.

The SSP scenarios represent a range of possible future “pathways” with variations in demographics, economics and climate action over the next century.

Our research involved three steps:

1. assessing air pollution exposure levels for selected SSP scenarios based on the air quality simulation results from the AerChemMIP project (Aerosols and Chemistry Model Inter-comparison Project);
2. assessing the long-term mortality impacts in each scenario;
3. designing useful visualizations to display the health benefits at the subnational level.

Advancing Women’s Research Success Grant

Monash University (2019)

Dr Shanshan Li was awarded a Monash University Advancing Women’s Research Success Grant to support her Monash-Indonesia collaborative programme that examines children’s health effects of air pollution and high temperature, including a range of bio-indicators, physical and cognitive development.

The programme is at its initial phase and the research assistant’s activities include:

1. Preparation of ethical clearance at Monash end (primary ethics is processing and expected to be approved in Indonesia by 01/2019);
2. Data management: download and link air pollution and temperature data to health data (children’s health databases in Indonesia are available), and perform data cleaning;
3. Contribute to basic data analysis and involve in manuscript preparation;
4. Assist in development of funding proposals;
5. Communicate and coordinate with Indonesian research collaborators.

Estimating air pollution exposure and its health effects in China

NHMRC Centre for Air quality and health Research and evaluation (CAR) Seed Funding (2017)

research.monash.edu/en/projects/nhmrc-centre-for-air-quality-and-health-research-and-evaluation-c