71Advanced Environmental Epidemiology for Health and Climate Research

Focus and outcomes for participants The symposium will focus on insights and applications of advanced environmental epidemiology methods in health and climate research. The symposium will help the participants Rationale for the symposium, including for its inclusion in the Congress Climate change is the greatest health challenge in the 21st century. The most recent Lancet Countdown report (Watts et al. 2019) and the MJA-Lancet Countdown Australian reports (Zhang et al. 2018; Beggs et al. 2019) on health and climate change research have once again highlighted the global vulnerability to health risks from climate change. Epidemiology plays an important role in informing policy to protect the public’s health from a changing climate. However, limited research has been conducted in the field, which may be due to the methodological challenges to conducting research in climate change epidemiology (Xun et al. 2010). However, there are opportunities for advancing epidemiological research in the context of climate change, as highlighted in the recent paper published in the American Journal of Epidemiology (Anderson et al. 2019). The proposed symposium aligns precisely with the conference theme on methodological innovations in epidemiology and the need for epidemiologists who are keen to address non-traditional epidemiological health risks to support decision-making under a changing climate. This symposium will be a timely event to build capacity needed to address more extreme weather events and disasters related to climate change in Australia and globally. Presentation program (90 minutes) The symposium will have 6 presentations, 15 minutes each including Q&A. Names and short biography of presenters