Centre for Safe Air

1.5 million Australians – almost five percent of the population – live with diabetes.While links with obesity and diet are well known, air pollution is also a significant modifiable risk factor. In 2021, nearly 10% of diabetes related deaths in Australia were attributed to air pollution.In this webinar researchers will present findings regarding the links between diabetes and air pollution, and what this tells us about how to reduce diabetes in Australia: Professor Joachim Heinrich, Head of Population Studies at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich; and Yiwen Zhang, PhD candidate and member of the Climate, Air Quality Research in the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine at Monash University.The webinar and a live Q&A will be facilitated by Dr Sabrina Idrose, Post-doctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Safe Air, Melbourne University.

Children are especially vulnerable to air pollution which can have both acute and long-term impacts on their health and wellbeing.Allergies, asthma and the airborne transmission of infectious diseases are the most visible impacts of air pollution for children under 15 years of age. However, beginning in the womb, children can be exposed to air pollution that impacts their long-term respiratory, cardiovascular, and cognitive health in ways that are less obvious.Improving air quality in the settings where children spend much of their time—such as schools, playgrounds and in the home—represents an important opportunity for improving health outcomes for Australians across the life course.In this webinar, we hear from air quality researchers and public health professionals with a particular focus on improving children’s health: Dr Amanda Wheeler, Senior Research Scientist CSIRO, and Associate Investigator at the Centre for Safe Air; Hayley Dyke, Medical Lead for Communicable Disease Surveillance and Response, Centre of Disease Control, NT HealthThe webinar and Q&A will be moderated by Dr Sabrina Idrose, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Safe Air and Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne.