Health and Environment Across the Life-course (HEAL) DTP

Our aim is to establish a world-leading training environment that equips healthcare professionals with the interdisciplinary skills needed to understand how environmental contexts shape health across the lifespan, and to apply this knowledge in clinical research and practice. Fellows will follow a life-course framework, investigating how environmental exposures at specific life-stages (prenatal, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, ageing) influence health outcomes. Each student will have academic supervisors from two different schools/faculties, with a focus on combining methods to apply interdisciplinary research to one or more of our themes:

1. Culture and Society: Social determinants—including socioeconomic status, family dynamics, social networks/isolation, discrimination, neighbourhood deprivation, employment, and built environment—are major drivers of chronic disease. Structural inequities shape exposure to pollution, access to nutritious food, and vulnerability to climate-related risk, and there is need to better investigate these overlapping and interacting factors. 

2. Pollution, Climate and Urbanisation: Air pollution contributes to cardiovascular, metabolic, respiratory, and neurological disease, and adverse birth outcomes, but a broad range of pollutants – from microplastics to heavy metals – and other exposures such as noise pollution are emerging as key drivers of disease. Climate change exacerbates these risks and disproportionately harms vulnerable groups.  

3. Nutrition and Behaviour: Diet and other health behaviours (including tobacco and alcohol use, and physical activity/exercise) interact with cultural norms, family dynamics, and food access to shape physical and mental health. Across life-stages, different dietary exposures – including breastfeeding, ultra-processed foods, and excess sugar and salt – are key modifiable determinants of health, together with health behaviours, including physical activity, stress, and sleep. The underlying mechanistic pathways linking diet and behaviour with health are underexplored, but span metabolism, inflammation, and microbiome function. 

Please feel free to download and share our flyer to spread the word about the programme : HEAL_flyer.pdf [PDF 701KB]