The doctoral dissertation in the field of Public Health will be examined at the Faculty of Health Sciences at Kuopio Campus. The public examination will be streamed online.
What is the topic of your doctoral research? Why is it important to study the topic?
My doctoral research investigates if diet modifies how air pollution affects cardiometabolic health in children, adolescents, and adults, as part of the EU-funded LongITools project. Air pollution is a leading risk factor for cardiometabolic disease, with adverse health effects observed even at concentrations below the World Health Organisation’s air quality guidelines. While reducing pollution remains an important public health goal, there is growing interest in understanding whether other factors, such as diet, may influence how individuals respond to environmental exposures. Identifying factors that may help explain why some people are more or less resilient to the effects of air pollution could help improve our understanding of how air pollution affects different populations as well as inform future prevention strategies.
What are the key findings or observations of your doctoral research?
Harmful associations of short-term air pollution exposure with cardiometabolic health markers were observed in children, adolescents, and adults, despite average air pollution concentrations remaining below recommended limits. Our findings also suggested that diet quality modified how air pollution affected cardiometabolic health markers. This was particularly evident in children, especially for markers related to oxidative stress and insulin resistance. Further analyses indicated that plant-based dietary patterns may help mitigate some of the adverse health effects associated with air pollution exposure. The research also moved beyond asking whether diet shaped how air pollution affects health, but also examining why some groups may be more or less affected than others. This included considering how other lifestyle factors and socioeconomic circumstances may shape the relationship between air pollution and cardiometabolic health across the lifecourse.
An additional aspect of the doctoral dissertation was how we applied an exposome perspective, which aims to understand how multiple environmental, lifestyle, and social factors collectively influence health throughout life. As part of this work, I developed a composite exposure "exposome" score to capture the combined influence of air pollution, socioeconomic status, physical activity and sedentary behaviour, sleep, and diet. This provided a way to investigate how multiple exposures may jointly relate to cardiometabolic health while also identifying challenges in developing and implementing such a score.
How can the results of your doctoral research be utilised in practice?
Our findings highlight the importance of considering dietary factors when evaluating the health effects of air pollution. The results suggest that population differences in health responses to air pollution may not be fully understood without considering the broader contexts in which people live. Additionally, as air pollution exposure cannot always be avoided, understanding potentially modifiable factors that influence health responses may help identify opportunities to support health promotion and disease prevention. Our findings suggest that diet may be one such modifiable factor that influences how individuals respond to air pollution.
What are the key research methods and materials used in your doctoral research?
My doctoral research used data from the PANIC and ELIPA studies, which included children, adolescents, and adults living in Kuopio, Finland. Air pollution data were obtained from the Finnish Meteorological Institute and spatially averaged across urban monitoring stations to assess how short-term changes in air pollution exposure relate to cardiometabolic health markers, including oxidative stress, lipids, glucose metabolism, and metabolic signalling compounds. Diet quality was evaluated using the Finnish Children Healthy Eating Index in children and adolescents and the Baltic Sea Diet Score in adults.
Doctoral dissertation (link available later)
For further information, please contact:
Darren Healy, MSc, [email protected]
