EPOCH: The impact of the Environment and Pollution On Cognitive Health: Building the knowledge base through international collaboration
Vibrant, high-density, destination-rich neighbourhood environments provide opportunities for older residents to engage in physical, social and mental activities that benefit cognitive health. However, such environments are also associated with harmful levels of traffic-related pollution and noise. Understanding the complexity of these two dimensions on cognitive function in older people has been investigated in few studies, most have either focused on a limited number of built environmental features which promote physical activity (such as green spaces, local services) or on ambient air pollution in single geographical locations with restricted environmental variability. To understand the effects of different neighbourhood attributes on cognitive health, it is essential to examine covarying positive and negative environmental influences across diverse geographical locations. To address these knowledge gaps, this project aims to investigate the influence of complex environmental factors on cognitive health. This will be undertaken by enhancing environmental and air pollution measurements (UK: Cognitive Function and Ageing Study (CFAS) II, CFAS Wales, English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA); Australia: Personality And Total Health through life project (PATH), Sydney Memory and Ageing Study (MAS), Older Australian Twin Study (OATS)) and augmenting with studies with existing measures (UK: Biobank). As ambient air pollution, population density and access to green areas are substantially higher in the UK than in Australia undertaking similar analysis from data in the two continents enables more detailed investigation of the variability of environmental conditions beyond the range of values in a single country.
Specific objectives are to:
(1)Develop methods to enable the synthesis of environmental measures that promote physical, social and mental activities with those that cause environmental hazards across ageing cohorts in UK and Australia.
(2)Determine how these environmental factors affect cognitive decline, such as changes in memory, attention and executive function, and incidence of cognitive impairment and dementia.
(3)Understand the modifying effects of sex, indicators of socio-economic disadvantage, genetic risk of dementia and geographical location on the above associations.
(4)Capacity development. Expanding the future generation of researchers in environmental research and ageing is a key objective of this collaboration.