Health effects of air pollution on mental health: a literature review and an application in the Rome Longitudinal Study

Presenter: Massimo Stafoggia, PhD Senior Researcher, Department of Epidemiology, Lazio region Health Service / ASL Roma 1, Rome, Italy Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Institute of Environmental Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden Visiting Researcher, Fielding School of Public Health, University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), Los Angeles, CA, United States Dr. Stafoggia graduated in Statistical Sciences on 2001, took a M.Sc. in Biostatistics at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), and a PhD at the Karolinska Institutet of Stockholm, Sweden. He has been working as a biostatistician at the Department of Epidemiology, Lazio Region Health Service, Italy, since April 2003. Since January 2023 he is affiliated at Karolinksa Institutet, Sweden, as Adjunct Senior Lecturer. Currently (from July 2023 to June 2024) he is a visiting researcher at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), Fielding School of Public Health. He has contributed to the planning and implementation of several environmental epidemiology studies, at the Italian (SISTI, EPIAIR 1 and 2) and European level (HEAPSS, AIRGENE, ESCAPE, EXHAUSTION, ELAPSE, EXPANSE, MCC Collaborative Network), aimed at investigating the relationship between environmental exposures and adverse health outcomes. He has been Principal Investigator of the EU-funded project MED-PARTICLES: “Particles size and composition in Mediterranean countries: geographical variability and short-term health effects” (LIFE10 ENV/IT/000327) and co-P.I. of the Italian projects BEEP: “Big Data in Environmental and Occupational Epidemiology” and BIGEPI: “Use of BIG data for the investigation of the acute and chronic effects of air pollution in the Italian population”. In the last years, he has been involved in several national and international projects aimed at developing spatiotemporal models to predict daily PM concentrations at fine spatial grid in Italy, Sweden, Spain, Switzerland and UK, by use of satellite data. Among these, he is referent of Italy for the NASA-led project MAIA.Summary: The COVID-19 pandemic has led to large impacts on population health including changes to the circulation of other respiratory viruses. Additionally, it has also highlighted health disparities, especially among specific population groups. In this presentation, we will present a recently published ecological study of COVID infection among population sub-groups in Greater Vancouver British Columbia between June and November 2020. We will then present an application of geospatial machine learning techniques to forecast primary care visits for respiratory illnesses. We will finish with some potential future directions for utilizing modern machine learning techniques with spatiotemporal disease data. Summary: Exposure to air pollution has been identified as a major risk factor for mental health, however the literature is still sparse and large gaps remain on specific mental disorders. In this presentation Dr. Massimo Stafoggia will summarize the epidemiologic literature, showing the main research gaps. In the second part of the presentation, Dr. Stafoggia will report methods and results from a large study conducted in Rome, on an administrative cohort of 1.5 million individuals, where hospital admissions and drug prescription archives have been used to identify multiple mental diseases, and have been related to long term exposure to several air pollutants. Dr. Massimo Stafoggia will conclude his talk presenting new research opportunities, in particular a large European proposal under evaluation in HORIZON EUROPE.

Mediasite Presenter

5/7/2024 7:00:00 PM