Environmental Health Center (EHC) is a Russian Moscow-based Autonomous not-for-profit organization that associates experts in Environmental health, Sustainable development, Health risk assessment, Epidemiology and Biostatistics. In 1995 through 2002 the staff of EHC was involved in a large World Bank Environmental Management Project (EMP). In that period the EHC associates worked as the staff members of the Centre for Preparation and Implementation of International Projects on Technical Assistance(CPPI) and were responsible for implementation of the Environmental Health Component of the EMP. This included development of the tools for improvement of the Environmental Health decision-making (based on Health Risk Assessment, Comparative Risk Analysis and epidemiology). These methods were documented for Gossanepidnadzor (the Sanitary Epidemiology service of the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation) and the State Committee for Environmental Protection (now the Ministry of Natural Resources of Russia). Relevant software was also developed. Individual Health Risk Assessments and epidemiological studies were also undertaken for Gossanepidnadzor during the same period. EHC was officially formed in 1999. Over the previous five years, EHC staff's knowledge of key government institutions, as well as their scientific expertise, meant that they were well placed to continue to support government Environmental Health personnel in their work. In 2000, EHC carried out training courses for Gossanepidnadzor staff. Further environmental epidemiology and Health Risk Assessment courses were funded by DFID through their Small Grants Programme. This work was in partnership with staff from the Environmental Epidemiology Unit of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. In total more than four hundred Russian specialists have been trained by EHC staff since 1995. The training materials produced are officially sanctioned by Gossanepidnadzor and are available as distance-based learning modules on EHC's website (www.ehc.hut.ru). Training materials are presented in three modules - environmental epidemiology, biostatistics and health risk assessment. The following lectures and practical seminars are included: Indicators of population health changes and the role of the environment National, regional and local EH action plans Types of epidemiological study design Epidemiological measures of effect Measures of disease occurrence Confounding and Bias Air pollution in London Seminar on number of cases and rates Description of categorical variables, Sampling variability of proportions, Comparison of two proportions Exercises in descriptive statistics using manual examples Exercises on testing difference in categorical variables Sampling variability of means. Comparison of two means Risk analysis Hazard identification and dose response Exposure assessment Risk characterization Comparative risk analysis Introduction to Risk Management

EHC has strong international scientific collaboration. This includes work with Harvard School of Public Health, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Basel University. The EHC associates have published papers in international journals and presented at conferences such as the International Society of Environmental Epidemiology over a number of years. Currently, specialists of EHC participate in PATY (Pollution And The Young) project funded by the EU 5th Framework Quality of Life Programme along with specialists from LSHTM (Britain), Netherlands, Italy, Poland, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, USA, Austria, Germany, etc. PATY will provide input to some of the following air quality policy issues of current concern in Europe and elsewhere: Children's health and the environment Developing dose-response relationships The 'pollution cocktail': assessing independent and combined effects of different pollutants Evidence for thresholds of pollution effects Relative importance of outdoor pollution and indoor factors Susceptible groups: assessing risk by socioeconomic status, atopic status, etc. Reducing uncertainty: increased power, increased precision of effect estimates Focus on chronic exposures across Europe and beyond Data on pollution sources: effect estimates in relation to source characteristics The component studies are the CESAR, SIDRIA, Scarpol, North American 24-city and Russian 9-city studies, the 24-school study in the Netherlands, and studies conducted in Linz, Austria, and in Hettstedt, Bitterfeld, and Zerbst in Germany. Data will be assembled from 12 countries, a combined study size of 66,445 children from 131 areas. For more information visit the PATY pages of the LSHTM web-site. EHC has an agreement on collaboration with the Union of Russian Cities and provides the Union with Environmental Health expertise. EHC is also working on Local Environmental Action Plans in the Ukraine. This is in collaboration with the Institute for Sustainable Communities (USA) and involves Health Risk Assessment training of trainers (from Gossanepidnadzor, Environmental Committees and universities). The main stated priority areas of work for EHC are: air pollution from transport drinking water quality rural sanitation (water quality from wells next to pit latrines and agricultural use of night soil) child and maternal health (occupational health, accidents and respiratory illness associated with air pollution) EHC collaborates with numerous different types of organisations, including: Gossanepidnadzor government scientific research institutes academic institutes (both medical and environmental) non-governmental groups (largely environmental) Within our given area of expertise and with our existing partners, EHC's main goal is to train and support Russian specialists in their work to address the environmental health problems of Russia.

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EHC E-mail: ehci@lycos.co.uk