Environment, Climate Change and Health
We pursue a healthier environment by strengthening health sector leadership, building mechanisms for political and social support and monitoring progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals regarding environmental threats to health.
About us

Research coordination on children's environmental health

Promotion of collaborative research in children’s environmental health among scientists in developing and developed countries is critical to addressing health problems in their national and global contexts. The results of appropriate research studies can be used to implement prevention/intervention and remediation strategies and put in place evidence-based public health policies at the country level. These collaborative activities also result in technology transfer and capacity building, and in the build up of a network of trained scientific collaborators throughout the developing world. WHO has initiated pilot collaborations in children's environmental health in the following areas:

Coordination of new large-scale birth cohort studies

In the past 20 years, birth cohort studies to assess the risks to developing children from harmful chemicals in air, water and food have been undertaken in many countries.  These birth cohort studies usually started during pregnancy and followed children through adolescence or beyond.  Even the largest of these birth cohort studies, however, were not big enough to study rare outcomes such as childhood cancer or sudden infant death syndrome.  To increase the sample size, investigators working with these older cohort studies are now making an effort to pool their data.  Their efforts are hampered by the fact that the older studies did not usually agree upon disease outcome definitions, time periods of measurement, or methods for measuring biomarkers and chemical contaminants in air, water and food.  This makes pooling data extremely difficult. 

To avoid such problems in the next generation of large-scale birth cohort studies, it is worthwhile for investigators from various countries to invest time up front to agree on how to assess disease outcomes, measure biomarkers, and measure environmental exposures.  Pooling of data, should that be desirable, with then be much more straightforward. 

To strengthen, international cooperation on the next generation of birth cohort studies of child health and the environment, WHO is willing to work with others towards defining a list of core elements for inclusion in birth cohort studies.  Such core elements could include disease outcome measurements, biomarkers and exposure measurements. This will help to move the science forward by increasing the likelihood that datasets can be easily combined in the future, yielding studies with more power to identify positive results. 

There is currently a unique window of opportunity to make significant progress because a number of birth cohort studies are either being designed or in the early stages of being launched.  During this unique time, it may be possible to achieve agreement on a number of important study elements.

Workshop on the Promotion of Collaborative Research

Following the main recommendations of the Bangkok International Conference held in 2002, a workshop was held in Pattaya, Thailand, 3-5 February 2003, which focused on the following four objectives:

  • Review progress and follow-up activities.
  • Discuss in depth some specific on-going or planned CEH research activities in South-East Asia and Western Pacific regions.
  • Discuss and make recommendations on strengthening and building research capacity in CEH, particularly in developing countries, and
  • Develop and implement specific research collaborations and networks.

Read the workshop report

Key publications

Collaboration between the World Health Organization and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences
3 April 2012

Collaboration between the World Health Organization and the National Institute of Environmental Health...

For nearly 30 years, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) have worked together under...

Download
Read More
Children’s health and the environment: A global perspective: A resource manual for the health sector
13 July 2005

Children’s health and the environment: A global perspective: A resource manual for the health sector

This ground-breaking manual incorporates both developing and industrialized country outlooks to give a comprehensive international account of how environmental...

Download
Read More
International Conference on Environmental Threats to the Health of Children: Hazards and Vulnerability
22 March 2002

International Conference on Environmental Threats to the Health of Children: Hazards and Vulnerability

The scope of the conference was largely regional and focused on Children’s Environmental Health (CEH) issues which had a very high prevalence and...

Download
Read More