Energy, Air Pollution and Population Health (EAPH)

The Energy, Air Pollution and Population Health (EAPH) Research Group is located within the Department of Public Health, Policy and Systems and leads the Global research programme for the WHO Collaborating Centre for Policy Research on Determinants of Health Equity. The Group conducts sector leading research in the field of air pollution and population health with a focus on household and institutional air pollution and prevention through clean energy access in Lower- and Middle- Income countries (LMICs).

Our group has been instrumental in establishing the evidence base for household air pollution and global disease burden.  With approximately 3 billion people relying on polluting solid fuels and kerosene for household energy, household air pollution from burning these fuels is estimated to cause 2.3 million premature deaths annually.   

We have provided critical public health policy evidence on the effectiveness of interventions to address household air pollution. Our research has helped steer the current agenda for scale of clean fuels and energy in LMICs.  Our group lead development of the WHO Air Quality Guideline on Household Fuel Combustion that are the foundation of global public health policy to address air pollution disease burden in LMICs. 

We are leading efforts to support scaled adoption of clean household and institutional energy in sub-Saharan Africa (where 900,000 million people rely on polluting household energy and associated deaths from exposure to air pollution number almost 700,000 each year (more than HIV/ aids and malaria). 

We support programmatic scale of primary and secondary prevention of household air pollution through community health systems strengthening in sub-Saharan Africa.  This includes the Community Household Air Pollution Prevention Programme now being implemented to train 100,000 Community Health Workers across Kenya and being introduced to Uganda, Rwanda and Cameroon. 

Through collaboration with the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI), our Group has established an Air Pollution Centre of Excellence in Nairobi, Kenya including an air quality laboratory housing Africa’s only gravimetric air pollution filter processing robot. 

Our group is developing an Air Pollution and Public Health Research Hub at the Department of Public Health, Policy and Systems to support research in the UK and Europe on the environmental determinants of health.