Abstract for: The Exposome and its use in Navigating Complex Systems

Our environmental and urban systems represent diverse combinations of built features, environmental constituents, and social dynamics, all of which undergo various interactions before contributing to human health endpoints. The 'exposome' concept, which aspires to quantify the totality of internal and external environmental exposures across the life course, provides a systematic and comprehensive methodology through which these complex interactions can be examined, and their impacts on health assessed through a discovery-driven approach. Given the inherent complexity of exposome systems, new, or updated, analytical techniques are required in order to properly navigate this complexity and produce findings that are both scientifically valid and meaningful from the perspective of policy, interventions, and public communication. In this session, we will explore the exposome concept, with a focus on external environmental features, and some of its recent applications, including its use in population based studies, the use of agent-based-modelling, and the development of causal chain pathways.