An important conclusion from recent research is that adverse impacts can be reduced by changing socio-economic conditions in ways that reduce vulnerability, as well as by controlling exposures. Tackling many environmental threats to health will therefore involve a mixture of mitigation of the threat, and of adaptation to it. It also must be recognised that the impacts of environmental conditions on human health will be profoundly affected by deep-rooted demographic changes such as population growth and ageing. A number of research issues were raised across all of the workshops. Any agenda on research on health and the environment needs to be multi-scaled in both space and time.
Research needs to be encouraged at the local, regional, national and global scales simultaneously.
It will be challenging to find ways to integrate the findings along these space-time dimensions. If research findings are to have meaning beyond the scientific community, methods of full-cost accounting of the impacts of both changing health status and environmental change will need to be developed. Both current and long-term costs in the broadest sense will need to be part of these methodologies, which will require a vision of the long latency periods of many health outcomes and a global population which will be larger and have a very different demographic profile. As the 21st century proceeds, an increasing proportion of the global population will be elderly, but their health status will be partly determined by their exposure to natural and human hazards throughout the life course. This will be a difficult and expensive undertaking and progress is likely to be slow, particularly for less developed countries where other priorities for expenditure are likely to prevail.