2023-24 Premier’s Awards for Health and Medical Research - Dr Rongbin Xu

2023-24 Premier’s Awards for Health and Medical Research
Dr Rongbin Xu
Winner, Premier’s Excellence Award and Public Health Researcher Award
PhD Project: Health and epigenetic impacts of climate change.
Climate change is a major public health issue. Dr Rongbin Xu's PhD project focused on the health and epigenetic (alterations to the way genes are switched on/off without a change in the DNA sequence) impacts of climate change-related environmental factors (CCREF), including landscape fires (mainly bushfires), heat, and residential greenspace. The primary health impacts he studied include mortality and major morbidity (e.g., hospitalization).
His work showed that each year over 2 billion people worldwide are exposed to substantial landscape fire air pollution (LFAP), and the global population exposure to LFAP is increasing along with the warming climate. His project also provided new robust evidence on the health impacts of LFAP by showing that exposure to the 2014 Hazelwood coal mine fire smoke can increase respiratory hospitalisations in the following 5 years.
Heat affects even more people than landscape fires, and his work confirmed the well-known evidence that heat can increase cardiorespiratory and mental illness. Additionally, he identified many under recognized heat-related consequences like undernutrition, diabetes, kidney diseases, and interpersonal violence.
Residential greenspace can reduce the health impacts of heat and air pollution, and his study strengthened this point by finding that greater areas of greenspace within 2km surrounding residential addresses can slow down the pace of biological aging.
His work identified many novel human genes with epigenetic changes related to temperature, LFAP, and greenspace. Those genes are potential targets for interventions.
Overall, Dr Xu's PhD research provided essential evidence and data to prevent and reduce various health impacts of CCREF.