The Consortium for Climate, Health and Air Pollution Research in India (CHAIR-India) Stakeholder Meeting was held on December 1, 2022 at the The Metropolitan, New Delhi, India. Participants joined the deliberations in-person and virtually. Some key highlights from this meeting are shared below.
A context-setting welcome by Dr. Poornima Prabhakaran was followed by a short introduction to the CHAIR India Consortium and its journey from May 2019 onwards by Dr Petter Ljungman. He officially launched the CHAIR India website. Prof D Prabhakaran presented “Landscaping air pollution and health effects research in India, highlighting gaps & challenges”, where he shared results on PM2.5 and cardio-metabolic health outcomes and other upcoming association studies in Delhi and Chennai, and highlighting the need for more studies in the Indian context to inform policies and programs.
Dr Siddhartha Mandal and Mr Ajit Rajiva shared results from our unique ensemble model which demonstrates at a fine spatio-temporal resolution the exposure to PM2.5 from 2008-2020. The model leverages multiple sources of data and complex machine learning techniques, with prediction accuracy close to 85-90%. The air pollution exposure estimates from our model can be retrospectively linked to health outcomes data collected in various parts of the country (2008-2020), provided the participants’ addresses are geocoded. We believe that this will help accelerate the scientific evidence base in air pollution epidemiology, without having to undertake prospective studies. We are currently modelling ambient temperature using a similar process.
Dr Kevin Lane and Dr Itai Kloog were delighted to share a preview to the online environmental exposure resource tool which is housed within the CHAIR India website while the results from our short- and long-term mortality studies were presented by Dr Jeroen de Bont and Dr Suganthi Jaganathan. The results are suggestive of increased deaths due to ambient air pollution in both short- and long-term.
A panel discussion on “Programs and policy initiatives to address air pollution and climate change in India” was moderated by Dr Poornima Prabhakaran with panel members including Dr Bhargav Krishna (Centre for Policy Research), Dr Pratima Singh (Center for Study of Science, Technology and Policy), Dr Rameshwar Sorokhaibam (National Centre for Disease Control), Prof. Anand Krishnan (All India Institute for Medical Diseases, Delhi), Dr Rajiv Kumar Jain (Association of Environmental and Occupational Health-Delhi).
