RESUMEN
The environmental impact on health is an inevitable by-product of human activity. Environmental health sciences is a multidisciplinary field addressing complex issues on how people are exposed to hazardous chemicals that can potentially affect adversely the health of present and future generations. Exposure sciences and environmental epidemiology are becoming increasingly data-driven and their efficiency and effectiveness can significantly improve by implementing the FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable) principles for scientific data management and stewardship. This will enable data integration, interoperability and (re)use while also facilitating the use of new and powerful analytical tools such as artificial intelligence and machine learning in the benefit of public health policy, and research, development and innovation (RDI). Early research planning is critical to ensuring data is FAIR at the outset. This entails a well-informed and planned strategy concerning the identification of appropriate data and metadata to be gathered, along with established procedures for their collection, documentation, and management. Furthermore, suitable approaches must be implemented to evaluate and ensure the quality of the data. Therefore, the 'Europe Regional Chapter of the International Society of Exposure Science' (ISES Europe) human biomonitoring working group (ISES Europe HBM WG) proposes the development of a FAIR Environment and health registry (FAIREHR) (hereafter FAIREHR). FAIR Environment and health registry offers preregistration of studies on exposure sciences and environmental epidemiology using HBM (as a starting point) across all areas of environmental and occupational health globally. The registry is proposed to receive a dedicated web-based interface, to be electronically searchable and to be available to all relevant data providers, users and stakeholders. Planned Human biomonitoring studies would ideally be registered before formal recruitment of study participants. The resulting FAIREHR would contain public records of metadata such as study design, data management, an audit trail of major changes to planned methods, details of when the study will be completed, and links to resulting publications and data repositories when provided by the authors. The FAIREHR would function as an integrated platform designed to cater to the needs of scientists, companies, publishers, and policymakers by providing user-friendly features. The implementation of FAIREHR is expected to yield significant benefits in terms of enabling more effective utilization of human biomonitoring (HBM) data.
RESUMEN
Obtaining holistic information about health and health determinants at the population level should also include data on environmental risk factors of health. So far, only a few countries have combined, at the national level, health and human biomonitoring (HBM) surveys to collect extensive information on health, lifestyles, biological health determinants and environmental exposures. This paper will provide guidelines on how to combine health and HBM surveys and what is the added value of doing so. Health and HBM surveys utilize similar infrastructure and data collection methods including questionnaires, collection and analysis of biological samples, and objective health measurements. There are many overlapping or comparable steps in these two survey types. At the European level, detailed protocols for conducting a health examination survey or HBM study exists separately but there is no protocol for a combined survey available by now. Our recommendations for combined health and HBM surveys focus on a cross-sectional survey on general population aged 6-79 years. To avoid unnecessary participant burden, for the selection of included measurements basic principle would be to ensure that results of the measurements have a public health relevance and clear interpretation. Combining health and HBM surveys into one survey would produce an extensive database for research to support policy decisions in many fields such as public health and chemical regulations. Combined surveys are cost-effective as only one infrastructure is needed to collect information and recruit participants.