Event venue: Lecture Theatre 3 (GBLT3), Old Govt Building, Pipitea Campus

Speaker: Professor Colin Simpson

Asthma has a considerable, but potentially, avoidable burden on many populations globally. Scotland has some of the poorest health outcomes from asthma. Although ambient pollution, weather changes and sociodemographic factors have been associated with asthma attacks, it remains unclear whether modelled environment data and geospatial information can improve population-based asthma predictive algorithms. Professor Simpson will present findings from a project to create the afferent loop of a national learning health system for asthma in Scotland and the associations between ambient pollution, meteorological, geospatial and sociodemographic factors and asthma attacks.

Colin Simpson is a trained epidemiologist and the Professor of Population Health and Associate Dean Research & Innovation, at the Faculty of Health - Victoria University of Wellington. He has expertise in primary care data, with research interests including respiratory disease with a focus on asthma, COPD and influenza and he is a co-investigator of the Asthma UK Centre for Applied Research.

For further information, please contact the HSRC administrator at HSRC@vuw.ac.nz.