The Fifth Conference of the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology in the Asia Chapter Region

The Asia Chapter of the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology (ISEE) provides a forum for the discussion of problems unique to the study of health and the environment and builds up a regional network of scientists involved in environmental epidemiology. The Chapter was first proposed as the East Asia Chapter in 2004 during the ISEE conference in New York and was formally established in 2005. In the following year, the first regional conference was held in Taipei, and the Chapter has been holding conferences every other year ever since, except for 2010, when the ISEE main conference was held in Seoul. During the 2013 ISEE conference in Basel, several major decisions were made by the member meeting of the Chapter. The Chapter changed its name to Asia Chapter (ISEE-AC) and expanded its region to include South Asia, Australia, and New Zealand. It was also decided that a member of the International Society of Exposure Science (ISES) Asia Chapter should become an Associate Member of ISEE-AC. In addition, the regional conferences, which should be held no less frequently than every 2 years, should be held jointly with the regional conference of the ISES Asia Chapter whenever feasible (Article IV, Section 1 of the ISEE-AC Bylaws). The idea of joint conferences between the two societies was not new, although it was not written into the bylaws of ISEE. ISES held its second conference jointly with ISEE (the 4th ISEE main conference) in Cuernavaca in 1992, and 10 more joint conferences have been held afterwards. Through the effort of the organizers, the first joint conference of the Asia Chapters of the two societies, Conference of the ISEE and ISES–Asia Chapter 2016, was held at the Hokkaido University in Sapporo from June 26 to 29. Under the main theme of “Environment, Health and Sustainable Society,” the program included two Plenary Sessions (four presentations), 23 Symposia (125 presentations), 19 General Oral Sessions (116 presentations), two Poster Sessions (174 presentations), one Pre-conference Workshop, one Post-conference Workshop, and two Luncheon Seminars. Around 450 delegates from 19 countries attended the conference, not including local students. This conference attracted delegates from a substantial number of Asian countries without ISEE members such as Mongolia, Singapore, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. Delegates also came from countries far beyond the chapter region such as Canada, Serbia, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, and United States. Travel awards were given to 63 students and young researchers. Awardees’ abstracts were rated by three reviewers each, taking into account economic levels of the countries, and final decisions were made by the Travel Award Committee. Although a conference is a one-time event, publishing articles presented at the conference leaves a more permanent record and allows a larger number of people access to the information shared during the event. We are grateful that Timothy L. Lash, Editor-in-Chief of Epidemiology, agreed once again to dedicate a supplemental issue of the journal to the conference. In addition, we would like to thank Dr. Atsuko Araki for her assistance to edit this issue. Among the works that passed through the rigorous review process, a large part are on air pollution, with three focusing on particulate matter (Chen et al; Noh et al; Tasmin et al). The outcomes studied ranged from health conditions such as lung function (Dirgawati et al) and birthweight (Q Wang et al); specific diseases such as spontaneous pneumothorax (Han et al), diabetes (Chen et al), and stroke (Dirgawati et al; Noh et al); to all-cause mortality (Noh et al). There are a substantial number of papers on weather factors, with one on its interaction with air pollution (Q Wang et al), and the outcomes studied included birth outcomes (J Wang et al; Q Wang et al), pneumonia (Lam et al), and all-cause mortality (Lee et al). Although new environmental issues, such as triclosan (Zhu et al), diabetes (Chen et al), and autism (Nishimura et al), keep emerging, old problems such as exposures to mercury (Shin et al), ionizing radiation (Wong et al), and carbon monoxide (Huang et al), as well as occupational factors (Wong et al; Wu et al) remain environmental hazards of importance in this part of the world. As in the previous conference, chronic noninfectious diseases such as endocrinology disorders (Chen et al; Wong et al) and cardiovascular diseases (Dirgawati et al; Noh et al; Wu et al) took up a large part of the articles in this special issue. Many of the studies were on children, and environmental factors affect humans even before conception (Zhu et al). Therefore, environmental health is not just a lifelong issue; it has great impacts on future generations. We hope international meetings like this conference and scientific communications like this special issue will promote the influence of environmental epidemiology on health policy and make our society more sustainable. ABOUT THE AUTHOR HOW-RAN GUO received his medical training at the Taipei Medical College in Taiwan and earned a Master of Public Health, a Master of Science in Epidemiology, and a Doctor of Science in Environmental Health from the Harvard School of Public Health (currently Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health) in the United States. He joined ISEE in 1990 and has served as a Councilor, a Co-Chair of the East Asia Chapter, and the Chair of the Asia Chapter. Currently he is appointed as a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, College of Medicine, National Cheng Kung University and an Attending Physician in the Department of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, National Cheng Kung University Hospital in Tainan, Taiwan.

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