About INPHET

Purpose

INPHET aims to:

  • Increase the quality, availability, comparability, integration, and use of environmental monitoring and exposure and health surveillance data
  • Enhance national tracking capacity by providing a mechanism for members to share experiences, seek input on challenges, and provide opportunities for mentorship
  • Increase cross-national collaboration on common issues
  • Advance systematic analyses of environmental health data such as
    • Monitoring trends and burden of environmentally-related diseases
    • Monitoring environmental precursors of disease and health
    • Integrating, analyzing and interpreting geospatial and temporal trends and relationships between environmental hazards, exposure and health data
    • Identifying populations at risk from environmental hazards
    • Implementing and evaluating intervention and prevention strategies
    • Informing public health decision-makers

Members & Partners

  • Health departments
  • Ministries of health
  • International and national public health organizations (e.g., public health practitioners, civil servants)
  • Non-governmental organizations, environmental agencies, and related organizations
  • Data stewards
  • Academic Institutions (e.g., researchers, scientists, educators)

Example Activities

  • Co-ordination of international research projects on EPHT, for example
    • pilot initiatives
    • databases and their use
    • housing-related health hazards
    • environmental drivers of infectious diseases (E3 Geoportal)
  • Exchange of experiences/expertise, staff, trainees
  • Development and exchange of guidelines
  • Benchmarking
  • Training and education

Structure

INPHET is guided by two key groups: the steering committee and the scientific committee.

  • Steering Committee – This group is composed of the Chair, Deputy Chair, Immediate Past Chairs, and Secretariat. They are responsible for organsing INPHET meetings and resources, steering INPHET activities and managing membership of INPHET and the Scientific Committee members.
  • Scientific Committee – This group provides guidance and defines strategic direction and priorities for scientific and/or technical activities being conducted within the INPHET organizational framework.

Members include representatives from:

  • Department of Public Health, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
  • Department of Health, Victoria, Australia
  • Environmental Health, Vital Strategies, USA
  • Environmental Epidemiology and Population Health, Brunel University London, UK
  • Environmental Public Health, Environment Protection Authority Victoria, Australia
  • French Surveillance Programme on Air Pollution and Health, French National Public Health Agency
  • Health and Environment Group, Institute for Environmental Science and Research (ESR), New Zealand
  • Health Canada
  • Heidelberg Institute of Global Health, University of Heidelberg, Germany
  • Institute of Public Health, Albania
  • Lateralphc, Sweden
  • National Center for Disease Control, Georgia
  • National Center for Environmental Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, USA
  • National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health, Australian National University, Australia
  • National Institute for Public Health and Environment, The Netherlands
  • Radiation, Chemical and Environmental Hazards Directorate, UK Health Security Agency
  • Rete Italiana Medici Sentinella per l’Ambiente (RIMSA), International Society Doctors for the Environment (ISDE)
  • WHO Collaborating Centre for Children’s Health and the Environment, QLD Australia

Specific projects are conducted by different working groups under the direction of working group leaders.