The Biomedical Horizons: Exploring the Interplay of Environment and Health Short Course, developed by the William Harvey Research Institute, Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry at Queen Mary University of London, calls for an innovative and holistic approach to enable effective management of the chronic diseases that affect the world’s population.

Such complex diseases involve multi-factorial aetio-pathogenesis which is compounded by the burdens of lifestyle, societal (e.g., poverty) as well as environmental (e.g., pollution) factors, including an interplay with non-communicable diseases impacted by multi-morbidity and long-term conditions.

Lifestyle factors (including smoking, obesity, and unhealthy diet) often augment the entity of disease manifestation and hamper the effectiveness of clinical management. Health inequalities also impact on the care and treatment of rare diseases, where there is significant variation in the availability of therapies, biomarkers and research activities around specific rare diseases.

The course focuses on the following key areas:

• Natural Environment (e.g., land, water, air, energy)
• Microbial Environment (e.g., infectious diseases, commensal pathogens)
• Built Environment (e.g., urban, housing, transport)
• Psychosocial Environment (e.g., mental health, stress, poverty)
• The interplay and interaction among different aspects of the environment (exposome) to human health