Studying adverse health outcomes related to the environmental exposures (in the living and working environment) is a major societal challenge today. According to estimates made by the WHO, worldwide about 55 million people died in 2011 from non-communicable diseases (NCDs), including cancer, diabetes, chronic cardiovascular, neurological and lung diseases. Although epidemiological and toxicological studies provide evidence for a significant role of environmental exposure in initiation and progression of degenerative diseases and cancer, there is still the challenge of identifying determinants of prevalence and morbidity of NCDs. After spending much time and resources to identify the contribution of genetic factors in the onset of NCDs, it is time to look closer at the evidence for a role of environment factors in the prevalence and morbidity of NCDs, DiMoPEx will develop an interdisciplinry collaborative network, providing insight into emerging issues of morbidity and mortality from exposure-related health outcomes. The action will offer interdisciplinary opportunities for cooperation between scientists and physicians/clinicians. In addition, DiMoPEx aims to attract the interest of next generation early career investigators to the emerging issues of exposure-related disease burden and various aspects of exposure sciences. DiMoPEx will foster the capacity building in Europe from the bottom up to advance ongoing long term studies and to promote new research projects in this field. DiMoPEx will meet current public health challenges in joint research and training to understand the health-environment interactions in NCD etiology. The action will contribute to the development of successful preventive strategies in European countries.
environmental exposure - non-communicable exposure related diseases - interdisciplinary network on exposure assessment - validated evidence based exposure assessment - human biomonitoring
