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- Persson Waye, Kerstin, 1959, et al.
(författare)
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Adopting a child perspective for exposome research on mental health and cognitive development - Conceptualisation and opportunities.
- 2023
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Ingår i: Environmental research. - 0013-9351 .- 1096-0953. ; 239:Pt 1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Mental disorders among children and adolescents pose a significant global challenge. The exposome framework covering the totality of internal, social and physical exposures over a lifetime provides opportunities to better understand the causes of and processes related to mental health, and cognitive functioning. The paper presents a conceptual framework on exposome, mental health, and cognitive development in children and adolescents, with potential mediating pathways, providing a possibility for interventions along the life course. The paper underscores the significance of adopting a child perspective to the exposome, acknowledging children's specific vulnerability, including differential exposures, susceptibility of effects and capacity to respond; their susceptibility during development and growth, highlighting neurodevelopmental processes from conception to young adulthood that are highly sensitive to external exposures. Further, critical periods when exposures may have significant effects on a child's development and future health are addressed. The paper stresses that children's behaviour, physiology, activity pattern and place for activities make them differently vulnerable to environmental pollutants, and calls for child-specific assessment methods, currently lacking within today's health frameworks. The importance of understanding the interplay between structure and agency is emphasized, where agency is guided by social structures and practices and vice-versa. An intersectional approach that acknowledges the interplay of social and physical exposures as well as a global and rural perspective on exposome is further pointed out. To advance the exposome field, interdisciplinary efforts that involve multiple scientific disciplines are crucial. By adopting a child perspective and incorporating an exposome approach, we can gain a comprehensive understanding of how exposures impact children's mental health and cognitive development leading to better outcomes.
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| 2. |
- van Kamp, Irene, et al.
(författare)
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Early environmental quality and life-course mental health effects: The Equal-Life project
- 2022
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Ingår i: Environmental Epidemiology. - 2474-7882. ; 6:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background: There is increasing evidence that a complex interplay of factors within environments in which children grows up, contributes to children's suboptimal mental health and cognitive development. The concept of the life-course exposome helps to study the impact of the physical and social environment, including social inequities, on cognitive development and mental health over time. Methods: Equal-Life develops and tests combined exposures and their effects on children's mental health and cognitive development. Data from eight birth-cohorts and three school studies (N = 240.000) linked to exposure data, will provide insights and policy guidance into aspects of physical and social exposures hitherto untapped, at different scale levels and timeframes, while accounting for social inequities. Reasoning from the outcome point of view, relevant stakeholders participate in the formulation and validation of research questions, and in the formulation of environmental hazards. Exposure assessment combines GIS-based environmental indicators with omics approaches and new data sources, forming the early-life exposome. Statistical tools integrate data at different spatial and temporal granularity and combine exploratory machine learning models with hypothesis-driven causal modeling. Conclusions: Equal-Life contributes to the development and utilization of the exposome concept by (1) integrating the internal, physical and social exposomes, (2) studying a distinct set of life-course effects on a child's development and mental health (3) characterizing the child's environment at different developmental stages and in different activity spaces, (4) looking at supportive environments for child development, rather than merely pollutants, and (5) combining physical, social indicators with novel effect markers and using new data sources describing child activity patterns and environments.
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| 3. |
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| 4. |
- Loh, Karin, et al.
(författare)
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Toward Child-Appropriate Acoustic Measurement Methods in Primary Schools and Daycare Centers
- 2022
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Ingår i: Frontiers in Built Environment. - : Frontiers Media SA. - 2297-3362. ; 8
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Children spend a considerable amount of time in educational institutions, where they are constantly exposed to noisy sound environments, which has detrimental effects on children’s health and cognitive development. Extensive room acoustics measurements and long-term in-situ measurements in such institutions are scarce and are generally conducted using omnidirectional microphones. This study provides preliminary results of room acoustics in unoccupied conditions and in-situ noise measurements during occupancy, in classrooms and playrooms in Germany using an omnidirectional microphone, an adult HATS (head and torso simulator), and a child HATS. The results indicate that room acoustics of most of the sampled rooms need improvement (mid-frequency reverberation time, T30 (s) = 0.6 (0.3–1.1) and clarity index, C50 (dB) = 6.1 (1.6–10.4); speech transmission index (STI) = 0.7 (0.6–0.8); mean values and range); the sound pressure level (SPL) during activities was around 66dB (A-weighted equivalent level SPL) in both classrooms and playrooms using omnidirectional measurements, which is somewhat lower than similar measurements in other countries that varied in measurement periods; psychoacoustics parameters relating to sound fluctuation (fluctuation strength and roughness) show variation with increasing room volumes; and that there may be some benefit in considering child HATS for in-situ noise measurements. While the validity of these results in relation to children’s perceptual evaluation (using questionnaires, etc.) is subject to future investigations, the results highlight some of the nuances in the choice of transducers in measurements with children and potential benefits of psychoacoustic parameters in complementing the SPL-based parameters in more comprehensively characterizing the noise environments in educational institutions.
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