As a part of the 48th Annual National Conference of Indian Association of Preventive and Social Medicine (IAPSMCON2021), Department of Community Medicine and School of Public Health, PGIMER, Chandigarh, in collaboration with the Department of Environment Studies, Panjab University, Chandigarh, organized a workshop on “Health Risk Assessment”. Dr. Ravindra Khaiwal, Additional Professor of Environment Health, Department of Community Medicine and School of Public Health, PGIMER, Chandigarh and Dr. Suman Mor, Chairperson, Department of Environment Studies, Panjab University, Chandigarh, coordinated the program.
Ms. Payden, Deputy, WHO representative to India and Dr. Sujeet Kumar Singh, Director National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), New Delhi, was the chief guest of the inaugural ceremony. In his message, Dr. Sujeet Singh highlighted that the government is committed to minimizing the adverse impacts of environmental pollution under the national programme of climate change and human health. Ms. Payden from WHO highlighted that environmental pollution and degradation have a huge impact on people’s lives, and most of these problems could be averted through proper planning and implementation.
Dr. Joy Kumar Chakma, Scientist ‘E’ & Program Officer, Division of Non Communicable Disease, Indian Council of Medical Research, India and Prof VR Sinha were guests of honor of the valedictory session. Dr. Chakma stressed that there is a need to strengthen the efforts on post monitoring of industrial pollutants and regulatory compliance to avoid public health risks. Dr. Sinha highlighted the need for multi-stakeholder partnerships to strengthen pollution monitoring for environmental risk reduction.
The workshop focuses on basic of environmental and health impact assessment, epidemiological study design to understand the effects of environmental pollution, hands-on exercise on various risk assessment tools, including case studies from India, Japan and the United States of America. During the workshop, the key observation was that long-term studies on exposure to air pollutants and health effects are missing from India. There is a need to strengthen the monitoring network, including remote sensing data, to complement the ground-based monitoring data.
The workshop includes extensive lectures from Dr. Shankar Prinja, Dr. Ravindra Khaiwal, Dr. PVM Lakshmi from PGIMER, Chandigarh. Dr. Tanbir Singh and Dr. Suman Mor from Punjab University, Chandigarh. Dr. Harshal Salve from AIIMS, New Delhi, Dr. Sreekanth from CSTEP, Bengaluru. The various sessions of the health risk workshop were chaired by Dr. Shikha Vardhan and Dr. Meera Dhuria from National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), New Delhi; Dr. Adithya Pradyumna from Azim Premji University, Bengaluru and Dr. Manjeet Saluja, from World Health Organization (WHO), India
The international speakers and chairs included Dr. Maninder Kaur from Canada; Dr. Pallavi Pant from Health Effect Institute, USA; Prof. Peter Orris from the University of Illinois, Chicago, USA and Dr. George Thurston from New York University School of Medicine, USA and Dr. Kayo Uedo, Kyoto University from Japan.
The workshop was attended by over 100 participants from India representing 20 states, including international participation and was organized in partnership with Healthy Energy Initiative, India and Climate Trends, India. The workshop was supported by Dr. Rupinder Kaur, Mr. Varun Katoch, Mr. Sahil Kumar, Mr. Rattandeep, from PGIMER, Chandigarh and Er. Sahil Kumar and Er. Sanjeev Bhardwaj from Punjab University, Chandigarh.
