By 2030 more than 80% of Europe’s population will live and interact with a complex urban environment, consisting of a mixture of social and environmental factors. These factors include: where we live and work, where and what we eat, our social network, and what chemical substances we are exposed to. Individually or collectively these factors, known as the Urban Exposome, have an often modifiable impact on our health and provide important targets to improve population health. By studying the impact of the Urban Exposome on the major contributors to Europe’s burden of disease: Cardio-Metabolic and Pulmonary DisWhere we live, what we eat, how much we exercise and many other factors non-generic drivers of disease have an potentially modifiable impact on our health.
This perspective is known as the Exposome. EXPANSE will address one of the most pertinent questions for urban planners, policy makers, and inhabitants in Europe: “How to maximize one’s health in a modern urban environment?”. We distinguish two compartments of the Exposome: the External Exposome capturing complex combinations of environmental, lifestyle and social factors affecting health, and the Internal Exposome, reflecting biological responses to External Exposome stressors. EXPANSE will study the impact of the Urban Exposome on Cardio-Metabolic and Pulmonary Health and by evaluating the impact of intervening on specific factors in the Urban Exposome on reducing the burden of CMPD. EXPANSE will bring together mega-sized administrative
cohorts, comprising the health data of more than 45 million European citizens, large individual adult and matured birth cohorts (> 2 million European citizens), and urban-lab case studies (5,000 individuals). Our goal is to create a long-term sustainable toolbox and infrastructure that can be used to generate knowledge on the Urban Exposome and the translation of this knowledge into actionable information for citizens, public sector policy makers, and private sector companies.

Sustainable Development Goals

Masaryk University is committed to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, which aim to improve the conditions and quality of life on our planet by 2030.

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