Phillips Carl V, Burstyn Igor, Miller David J, Hamade Ali K, Avanasi Raghavendhran, Boon Denali, Rege Saumitra V, Déglin Sandrine E
Epiphi Consulting, Nashua, NH, United States of America.
Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, United States of America.
Glob Epidemiol. 2024 Sep 28;8:100167. doi: 10.1016/j.gloepi.2024.100167. eCollection 2024 Dec.
One of the practical contributions of epidemiology studies is to inform risk assessment and management to protect public health. However, there is a perception among some that environmental and occupational epidemiology is falling short of satisfying the needs of risk assessors. The specific reasons for this are not clearly understood. To help identify the points of dissatisfaction and possible areas for mutual learning, we conducted a survey of risk assessors, seeking their opinions of epidemiology research. We present a few quantitative measures and a thematic analysis of responses to open-ended questions. Survey results suggest that some risk assessors (with some adamant exceptions) believe that epidemiology has great potential to contribute to risk assessment but can be deficient in many ways. For example, respondents identified the lack of full disclosure of methods, deficiencies in exposure assessment, the absence of comprehensive uncertainty analyses, and the failure to investigate or explore thresholds of effects as some of the common shortcomings. These could be straightforward to address. Respondents also brought up a wide collection of more complicated and subtle concerns that could lead to further improvement of useful results. We identify areas where mutually-educating interdisciplinary dialogue seems particularly promising. Epidemiology research is expensive, and risk management decisions even more so; therefore, it is desirable for the risk assessment and epidemiologic communities to work toward making epidemiologic research more useful for informing decisions.
流行病学研究的实际贡献之一是为风险评估和管理提供信息，以保护公众健康。然而，一些人认为环境与职业流行病学未能满足风险评估者的需求。对此具体原因尚不清楚。为了帮助找出不满之处以及相互学习的可能领域，我们对风险评估者进行了一项调查，征求他们对流行病学研究的意见。我们给出了一些定量措施以及对开放式问题回答的主题分析。调查结果表明，一些风险评估者（有一些坚定的例外情况）认为流行病学对风险评估有很大贡献潜力，但在许多方面可能存在不足。例如，受访者指出方法未充分披露、暴露评估存在缺陷、缺乏全面的不确定性分析以及未调查或探讨效应阈值是一些常见的缺点。这些问题可能很容易解决。受访者还提出了一系列更复杂、更微妙的问题，这些问题可能会带来更有用结果的进一步改进。我们确定了跨学科相互教育对话似乎特别有前景的领域。流行病学研究成本高昂，风险管理决策更是如此；因此，风险评估界和流行病学领域应努力使流行病学研究对决策更有帮助。
