The research of Mei-Po Kwan addresses health, transport, environmental, and social issues in urban areas through the application of innovative geographic information system (GIS) methods. She focuses on understanding how socioeconomic differences (e.g., gender, income, race, ethnicity, and religion) shape urban residents' everyday experiences and perceptions/use of the built environment. Mei-Po is also interested in studying how specific characteristics of the social and physical environment affect the wellbeing and behavior of different social groups. Current projects attempt to mitigate two fundamental methodological problems while examining health-environment relationships: the uncertain geographic context problem (UGCoP) and the neighborhood effect averaging problem (NEAP).
Lai Wei, Mei-Po Kwan, Roel Vermeulen, Marco Helbich
Journal of exposure science & environmental epidemiology
Utrecht University
Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning
3584 CB Utrecht
The Netherlands
The environment we live in has a dominant impact on our health. It explains an estimated seventy percent of the chronic disease burden. Where we live, what we eat, how much we exercise, the air we breathe and whom we associate with; all of these environmental factors play a role. The combination of these factors over the life course is called the exposome. There is general (scientific) consensus that understanding more about the exposome will help explain the current burden of disease and that it provides entry points for prevention and ...
Read More
