The Canadian Urban Environmental Health Research Consortium – a protocol for building a national environmental exposure data platform for integrated analyses of urban form and health

Jeffrey R. Brook, Eleanor M. Setton, Evan Seed, Mahdi Shooshtari, Dany Doiron and CANUE – The Canadian Urban Environmental Health Research Consortium

BMC Public Health BMC series https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-017-5001-5 Published: 8 January 2018

Abstract

Background

Multiple external environmental exposures related to residential location and urban form including, air pollutants, noise, greenness, and walkability have been linked to health impacts or benefits. The Canadian Urban Environmental Health Research Consortium (CANUE) was established to facilitate the linkage of extensive geospatial exposure data to existing Canadian cohorts and administrative health data holdings. We hypothesize that this linkage will enable investigators to test a variety of their own hypotheses related to the interdependent associations of built environment features with diverse health outcomes encompassed by the cohorts and administrative data.