Other Environmental Epidemiology: Heat, Air Pollution and Health
Environmental epidemiology asks how the air we breathe, the heat we live through, the noise around us and the
green space we can reach affect health. Answering those questions well takes a particular toolkit: exposures that no
one can measure directly on each person, designs built for populations rather than patients, and analyses that handle
temporal latencies, non-linearity and potential synergy between correlated exposures.
In three hours we will walk through two real studies end to end — one short-term, one long-term. You will see where the exposure data come from, why each design was chosen, how the analysis was set up, and what the findings do and do not support. The sessions are conversational rather than technical: no software, no code, no prior exposure-assessment experience needed.
Who is this for
Doctoral students at KI in epidemiology, public health, biostatistics, environmental medicine, and clinical and health-related fields — and equally their supervisors. Postdocs, junior and senior researchers, and clinicians with a research interest are all welcome.
Introductory-level epidemiology and biostatistics (Epidemiology I and Biostatistics I, or equivalent) is enough. Bring curiosity, not a laptop.
Program & Registration
Register here by October 26 · Places are limited; you will receive a confirmation by email.
Teachers
Petter Ljungman, MD, PhD, Associate Professor, Institute of Environmental Medicine, Karolinska Institutet; consultant cardiologist, Danderyd Hospital. Proposed course director.
Massimo Stafoggia, PhD, Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Institute of Environmental Medicine, Karolinska Institutet; Senior biostatistician, Department of Epidemiology, Lazio Regional Health Service, Rome.
Organised within the Doctoral Programme in Epidemiology and supported by KEEN, the Karolinska External Exposome Network.
A new doctoral course — and your chance to shape it
This workshop is a pilot for Environmental Epidemiology, a one-week doctoral course proposed within the Doctoral Programme in Epidemiology, with a first run planned for autumn 2027. Not one of KI’s 242 doctoral courses currently covers this field, even though air pollution ranks among the largest global risk factors for disease burden and a changing climate is reshaping the questions we ask.
The full week would cover application of environmental exposures (monitoring data, land-use regression, dispersion models, satellite data), short-term designs (time-series, case-crossover, distributed lag non-linear models), long-term cohort designs, multiple exposures and interaction, and health impact assessment — with hands-on R practicals and a group study proposal throughout. 1.5 higher-education credits.
The last half hour of the workshop is yours. We want to know whether the content is pitched right, what is missing, and whether you would sign up. Your feedback goes straight into the syllabus we submit in February 2027.