Environmental Effect on Health Care and Wellbeing and Active Interventions (ENACT)

Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) account for 80% of the disease burden as well as for the majority of premature deaths in the EU, diminishing the citizens’ quality of life, life expectancy, and increasing the financial burden (from those affected to the health system). During the last 3 decades, environmental stressors have been addressed through numerous studies, which have raised concerns about the detrimental effects of the environment on human health. The most evaluated environmental stressors are air temperature, particulate and gaseous air pollutants, urban noise, food pollutants, and radiation. By the end of 2022, air pollution was reported to be responsible for an excess mortality of 311.000 people per year in the EU-27, driving not only premature deaths but also an increased risk of vascular diseases such as ischemic heart disease, stroke, and other non-communicable non-vascular diseases like chronic respiratory diseases or depression. Some newly considered stressors, such as electromagnetic fields and light exposure, are also susceptible to affecting human health (e.g.: ocular and dermatological NCD diseases). ENACT aims at building a pathway to generate clinical, technological and economic short & long-term impact targeting local and regional stakeholders and create impact by: Developing a state-of-the-art environmental risk score and analyzer driven framework and platform to predict, monitor and prevent the exposomic risk of acute and chronic health conditions of chronic vascular and non-vascular NCDs. This new exposomic risk score and analyzer will support (a) patients, (b) health professionals/hospitals, and (c) policy makers; aiming at reducing the human and financial burden of NCD, considering potential individual vulnerability factors, and reinforcing both a clinical and a policy implementation that enables prevention and disease management for higher quality of life.