Mission Statement
Environmental health concerns all chemical, physical, and psychosocial environmental influences and their adverse or salutogenic effects on humans. It deals with the research, prevention and early detection of environmental health risks and with environmental aspects of health promotion. It aims at demonstrating the existence of such effects, elucidating the relationships between dose and effect, and analyzing the mechanisms of action.
This research is conducted with the overarching goal of primary prevention, as a science of the conservation and promotion of health in a holistic sense. This also includes nutrition and chronobiology. Ultimately environmental health supports the development of individual and collective measures to protect against harmful effects, as well as to promote health and sustainable development, and to evaluate these measures in terms of their efficiency, effectiveness and acceptance.
General Information
The Department of Environmental Health has been researching the environmental determinants of human health for many decades. It houses academics with a background in medicine, psychology and biology. It is a sub-unit of the Center for Public Health at the Medical University of Vienna.
The Department is also very active in teaching and is involved in basic medical education as well as in various courses, including PhD studies. Students are often involved in the department’s work as part of their diploma and doctoral thesis as well as in their "clinical-practical year".