Health Data for Public Health: Towards New Ways of Combining Data Sources to Support Research Efforts in Europe.

Objectives: To present the European landscape regarding the re-use of health administrative data for research. Methods: We present some collaborative projects and solutions that have been developed by Nordic countries, Italy, Spain, France, Germany, and the UK, to facilitate access to their health data for research purposes. Results: Research in public health is transitioning from siloed systems to more accessible and re-usable data resources. Following the example of the Nordic countries, several European countries aim at facilitating the re-use of their health administrative databases for research purposes. However, the ecosystem is still a complex patchwork, with different rules, policies, and processes for data provision. Conclusion: The challenges are such that with the abundance of health administrative data, only a European, overarching public health research infrastructure, is able to efficiently facilitate access to this data and accelerate research based on these highly valuable resources.

Reliability of different sampling densities for estimating and mapping lichen diversity in biomonitoring studies.

Sampling requirements related to lichen biomonitoring include optimal sampling density for obtaining precise and unbiased estimates of population parameters and maps of known reliability. Two available datasets on a sub-national scale in Italy were used to determine a cost-effective sampling density to be adopted in medium-to-large-scale biomonitoring studies. As expected, the relative error in the mean Lichen Biodiversity (Italian acronym: BL) values and the error associated with the interpolation of BL values for (unmeasured) grid cells increased as the sampling density decreased. However, the increase in size of the error was not linear and even a considerable reduction (up to 50%) in the original sampling effort led to a far smaller increase in errors in the mean estimates (<6%) and in mapping (<18%) as compared with the original sampling densities. A reduction in the sampling effort can result in considerable savings of resources, which can then be used for a more detailed investigation of potentially problematic areas. It is, however, necessary to decide the acceptable level of precision at the design stage of the investigation, so as to select the proper sampling density.

Techniques of ozone monitoring in a mountain forest region: passive and continuous sampling, vertical and canopy profiles.

Ozone is the most harmful air pollutant for plant ecosystems in the Mediterranean and Alpine areas due to its biological and economic damage to crops and forests. In order to evaluate the relation between ozone exposure and vegetation injury under on-field conditions, suitable ozone monitoring techniques were investigated. In the framework of a 5-year research project aimed at ozone risk assessment on forests, both continuous analysers and passive samplers were employed during the summer seasons (1994-1998) in different sites of a wide mountain region (80 x 40 km2) on the southern slope of the European Alps. Continuous analysers allowed the recording of ozone hourly concentration means necessary both to calculate specific exposure indexes (such as AOT, SUM, W126) and to record daily time-courses. Passive samplers, even though supplied only weekly mean concentration values, made it possible to estimate the altitude concentration gradient useful to correct the altitude dependence of ozone concentrations to be inserted into exposure indexes. In-canopy ozone profiles were also determined by placing passive samplers at different heights inside the forest canopy. Vertical ozone soundings by means of tethered balloons (kytoons) allowed the measurement of the vertical concentration gradient above the forest canopy. They also revealed ozone reservoirs aloft and were useful to explain the ozone advection dynamic in mountain slopes where ground measurement proved to be inadequate. An intercomparison between passive (PASSAM, CH) and continuous measurements highlighted the necessity to accurately standardize all the exposure operations, particularly the pre- and postexposure conservation at cold temperature to avoid dye (DPE) activity. Advantages and disadvantages from each mentioned technique are discussed.