ENRIECO

Duration

2009-2011

Coordinator

Mark Nieuwenhuijsen (ISGlobal)

Funded by

European Comission

Website

http://www.enrieco.org

ENRIECO was launched in March 2009 to advance knowledge on specific environment and health causal relationships in pregnancy and birth cohorts by providing support to exploitation of the wealth of data generated by past or ongoing studies funded by the EC and national programmes. The project will bring together over 30 pregnancy and birth cohorts and information of close to 250,000 newborns, infants and children from across Europe. The outcome will be a structured overview of data from various studies undertaken throughout Europe. This will improve the knowledge base for FP7 Cooperation Work Programme 2008: Environment and health linkages. Harmonizing and combining cohort data increases statistical power through an enlarged set of data, allowing us to examine also rare exposures and outcomes and to compare regional differences in Europe. The searchable database with exposure-response functions will be an easily accessible information resource for policy maker and others.

The ENRIECO project is divided into seven work packages (WPs) with each their own objectives:



Inventory of Birth Cohorts

Evaluation of Exposures

Evaluation of Health Outcomes

Evaluation of Exposure-Response Relationships

Database Building

Dissemination

Management.



WPs 2, 3, 4 and 5 are subdivided in workgroups (WGs) to tackle specific subject areas. WP2, 3 and 4 are dependent on the inventory created by WP1 as their information resource.

The project is a collaborative effort of eight institutions:

ISGlobal, Spain

INSERM, France

UU, Institute for Risk Assessment Sciences, The Netherlands

HMGU, Helmholtz Zentrum München, Germany

UoC, University of Crete, Greece

KI, Institute of Environmental Medicine, Sweden

Charité, Institute for Social Medicine, Germany

AUH, Aarhus University Hospital, Denmark


Following year 1 of the project, we now have a basic inventory of initial ENRIECO cohorts from published data and websites. It is currently being supplemented with additional cohorts. The database includes data of 31 participating cohorts obtained through an inventory questionnaire. Programming of a web-based database is underway.

WP2, 3, 4 and 5 have developed their overall strategies and are currently evaluating data and drafting reviews, which will be delivered, including recommendations, in November 2010.