Environmental health is the branch of public health concerned with all aspects of the natural and built environment affecting human health. In order to effectively control factors that may affect health, the requirements that must be met in order to create a healthy environment must be determined. The major sub-disciplines of environmental health are environmental science, toxicology, environmental epidemiology, and environmental and occupational medicine.
A public health journal is a scientific journal devoted to the field of public health, including epidemiology, biostatistics, and health care. Public health journals, like most scientific journals, are peer-reviewed. Public health journals are commonly published by health organizations and societies, such as the Bulletin of the World Health Organization or the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. Many others are published by a handful of large publishing corporations that includes Elsevier, Wolters Kluwer, Wiley-Blackwell, Springer Science+Business Media, and Informa, each of which has many imprints. Many societies partner with such corporations to handle the work of producing their journals.
An environmental factor, ecological factor or eco factor is any factor, abiotic or biotic, that influences living organisms. Abiotic factors include ambient temperature, amount of sunlight, and pH of the water soil in which an organism lives. Biotic factors would include the availability of food organisms and the presence of biological specificity, competitors, predators, and parasites.
Building science is the science and technology-driven collection of knowledge in order to provide better indoor environmental quality (IEQ), energy-efficient built environments, and occupant comfort and satisfaction. Building physics, architectural science, and applied physics are terms used for the knowledge domain that overlaps with building science. In building science, the methods used in natural and hard sciences are widely applied, which may include controlled and quasi-experiments, randomized control, physical measurements, remote sensing, and simulations. On the other hand, methods from social and soft sciences, such as case study, interviews & focus group, observational method, surveys, and experience sampling, are also widely used in building science to understand occupant satisfaction, comfort, and experiences by acquiring qualitative data. One of the recent trends in building science is a combination of the two different methods. For instance, it is widely known that occupants’ thermal sensation and comfort may vary depending on their sex, age, emotion, experiences, etc. even in the same indoor environment. Despite the advancement in data extraction and collection technology in building science, objective measurements alone can hardly represent occupants' state of mind such as comfort and preference. Therefore, researchers are trying to measure both physical contexts and understand human responses to figure out complex interrelationships.
Health impact assessment (HIA) is defined as "a combination of procedures, methods, and tools by which a policy, program, or project may be judged as to its potential effects on the health of a population, and the distribution of those effects within the population."
Disease burden is the impact of a health problem as measured by financial cost, mortality, morbidity, or other indicators. It is often quantified in terms of quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) or disability-adjusted life years (DALYs). Both of these metrics quantify the number of years lost due to disability (YLDs), sometimes also known as years lost due to disease or years lived with disability/disease. One DALY can be thought of as one year of healthy life lost, and the overall disease burden can be thought of as a measure of the gap between current health status and the ideal health status. According to an article published in The Lancet in June 2015, low back pain and major depressive disorder were among the top ten causes of YLDs and were the cause of more health loss than diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and asthma combined. The study based on data from 188 countries, considered to be the largest and most detailed analysis to quantify levels, patterns, and trends in ill health and disability, concluded that "the proportion of disability-adjusted life years due to YLDs increased globally from 21.1% in 1990 to 31.2% in 2013." The environmental burden of disease is defined as the number of DALYs that can be attributed to environmental factors. Similarly, the work-related burden of disease is defined as the number of deaths and DALYs that can be attributed to occupational risk factors to human health. These measures allow for comparison of disease burdens, and have also been used to forecast the possible impacts of health interventions. By 2014 DALYs per head were "40% higher in low-income and middle-income regions."
Environmental epidemiology is a branch of epidemiology concerned with determining how environmental exposures impact human health. This field seeks to understand how various external risk factors may predispose to or protect against disease, illness, injury, developmental abnormalities, or death. These factors may be naturally occurring or may be introduced into environments where people live, work, and play.
The International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health is a peer-reviewed open access scientific journal that was established in 2004 and is published by MDPI. The editor-in-chief is Paul B. Tchounwou. The journal covers all aspects of environmental health sciences and public health.
Current Biology is a biweekly peer-reviewed scientific journal that covers all areas of biology, especially molecular biology, cell biology, genetics, neurobiology, ecology, and evolutionary biology. The journal includes research articles, various types of review articles, as well as an editorial magazine section. The journal was established in 1991 by the Current Science group, acquired by Elsevier in 1998 and has since 2001 been part of Cell Press, a subdivision of Elsevier. According to Journal Citation Reports, the journal has a 2020 impact factor of 10.834. It was categorized as a "high impact journal" by the Superfund Research Program.
Women & Health is a peer-reviewed healthcare journal established in 1976. It covers research in the field of women's health. The editor-in-chief is Ellen B. Gold.
Occupational health psychology (OHP) is an interdisciplinary area of psychology that is concerned with the health and safety of workers. OHP addresses a number of major topic areas including the impact of occupational stressors on physical and mental health, the impact of involuntary unemployment on physical and mental health, work-family balance, workplace violence and other forms of mistreatment, psychosocial workplace factors that affect accident risk and safety, and interventions designed to improve and/or protect worker health. Although OHP emerged from two distinct disciplines within applied psychology, namely, health psychology and industrial and organizational psychology, for a long time the psychology establishment, including leaders of industrial/organizational psychology, rarely dealt with occupational stress and employee health, creating a need for the emergence of OHP. OHP has also been informed by other disciplines, including occupational medicine, sociology, industrial engineering, and economics, as well as preventive medicine and public health. OHP is thus concerned with the relationship of psychosocial workplace factors to the development, maintenance, and promotion of workers' health and that of their families. The World Health Organization and the International Labour Organization estimate that exposure to long working hours causes an estimated 745,000 workers to die from ischemic heart disease and stroke in 2016, mediated by occupational stress.
Epidemiology is a bi-monthly, peer-reviewed journal for epidemiologic research, published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.
Environmental social science is the broad, transdisciplinary study of interrelations between humans and the natural environment. Environmental social scientists work within and between the fields of anthropology, communication studies, economics, geography, history, political science, psychology, and sociology; and also in the interdisciplinary fields of environmental studies, human ecology and political ecology, social epidemiology, among others.
Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention is a peer-reviewed medical journal devoted to research in the field of cancer epidemiology. Topics include descriptive, analytical, biochemical, and molecular epidemiology, the use of biomarkers to study the neoplastic and preneoplastic processes in humans, chemoprevention and other types of prevention trials, and the role of behavioral factors in cancer etiology and prevention. It is published by the American Association for Cancer Research and co-sponsored by the American Society of Preventive Oncology.
The Health Education Journal is a peer-reviewed academic journal that covers the field of health education. It was established in 1943 and is published by SAGE Publications The editor-in-chief is Peter Aggleton.
The Journal of Adolescent Health is a peer-reviewed medical journal covering adolescent health and medicine, including biological, psychological, and social aspects. The journal publishes original research articles, review articles, letters to the editor, commentaries, and case reports. It is published by Elsevier on behalf of the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine, and was established in 1980 as the Journal of Adolescent Health Care, switching to its current name in 1991. Carol A. Ford has been the editor-in-chief since 2019.
Environmental Health is a peer-reviewed medical journal established in 2002 and published by BioMed Central. It covers research in all areas of environmental and occupational medicine. The editors-in-chief are Philippe Grandjean and David Ozonoff. According to the Journal Citation Reports, the journal has a 2019 impact factor of 4.690.
Prevention Science is a peer-reviewed public health journal covering prevention science.
The Journal of Environmental Science and Health, Part C: Environmental Carcinogenesis and Ecotoxicology Reviews is a biannual peer-reviewed scientific journal covering environmental health as it relates to carcinogenesis and toxicology. It was established in 1976 and is published by Taylor & Francis. The editor-in-chief is Peter P. Fu. According to the Journal Citation Reports, the journal has a 2015 impact factor of 3.667.
The International Journal of Qualitative Studies on Health and Well-being is a quarterly peer-reviewed open access scientific journal covering the application of qualitative research to the study of health. It was established in 2006 and is published by Taylor & Francis. The editor-in-chief is Henrika Jormfeldt. According to the Journal Citation Reports, the journal has a 2017 impact factor of 1.094, ranking it 114th out of 156 journals in the category "Public, Environmental & Occupational Health".
