|  Dr
Paul Wilkinson from the Public
& Environmental Health Research Unit talks about his career
and research
 After
studying medicine at Oxford University, I spent several years
in hospital medicine in London, before taking up an epidemiological
research post at the National Heart & Lung Institute. From
there I moved to the LSHTM in 1994.
It was then that I first began research into the links between
the environment and health, initially studying hazards arising
from localised chemical contamination of the environment - pollution
of the air and from industrial emissions. Such hazards have been
the focus of much international research effort in recent years
reflecting the problems associated with industrialisation and
urban living in both the developed and developing world.
More recently I have been part of a research team that has begun
to focus on the health impacts of global environmental change.
There is now increasing recognition that we face growing threats
to human health from large-scale environmental changes - threats
arising from our profligate consumption of the Earth's resources
and from pollution of our environment at a global scale.
One of those threats is climate change, and its potential impacts
on health is the theme of our co-operative research group on Climate
change, ozone depletion and health sponsored by the Medical Research
Council and the Natural Environment Research Council. Through
this group we are working with climate scientists at the Tyndall
Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia.
Our aim is to quantify vulnerability to climate change in different
regions of the world, to predict future health impacts and to
understand how we may ameliorate those impacts through public
health action. This entails new approaches to epidemiological
research and involves methodological complexities that we are
only just beginning to resolve.
Dr Kelley Lee also works in the Public
& Environmental Health Research Unit |