The Canadian Urban Environmental Health Research Consortium (CANUE)

摘要

CANUE is a Canadian Institutes of Health Research-funded platform for supporting environmental health research. CANUE collates and generates standardized environmental data on air and noise pollution, land use, green/natural spaces, climate change/extreme weather, and socioeconomic conditions for every postal code in Canada and makes them freely available to researchers. A dozen national exposure databases and related metadata files are now available through CANUE, and new regional and national datasets are regularly added to a central database. Streamlined processes for data sharing and integration have been developed to facilitate easy merging with existing observational cohorts and administrative health databases from across Canada. Substantial consultation has also taken place with a wide range of health data holders to establish appropriate processes for receiving and managing environmental data, with particular focus on addressing challenges presented by differing ethics, consent and confidentiality requirements. The CANUE collaborative model illustrates how the scientific potential and cost-effectiveness of environmental health research can be improved through better coordination among researchers and data holders. Processes facilitating the merging of area-level environmental exposure datasets with some of Canada's largest cohort and health databases help accelerate the research process by making analysis-ready data available to investigators, create unprecedented opportunities to study how multiple environmental factors are linked to a wide range of health outcomes, and generally increase the use of health and population databases for environmental health research.