The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR) are jointly organising an International Conference on “Using Epidemiological Studies in Health Risk Assessments: relevance, reliability and causality”, in Berlin on 9-10 November 2023.

Observational epidemiological studies can provide valuable evidence for health risk assessments in various areas including food and feed safety, chemical and product safety, occupational health, environmental health and animal health. However, the presumed inability of observational studies to demonstrate a causal relationship may even lead to their exclusion from the evidence assessment although they may provide valuable evidence for example in a weight-of-evidence approach. 

Risk assessors may encounter challenges when using epidemiological data for their assessments. Some of these are related to the approaches for the critical appraisal of the evidence of individual studies. Uncertainty about the causal nature of an observed association is a central question in the use of epidemiological evidence in health risk assessment. 

Epidemiologists, health statisticians, risk assessors, other users of epidemiological evidence (e.g., toxicologists and nutritionists) as well as risk managers and stakeholders are invited to share and discuss their experiences to promote the use of epidemiological data for health risk assessments. 

The conference is a two-day event with preconference workshops and will be composed of invited and submitted talks, poster sessions and interactive sessions.

It will cover three topics:

• Using epidemiological studies in health risk assessments
• Critical appraisal of individual epidemiological studies
• Appraising the epidemiological evidence on causality

The submission of abstract is open until 12^th July 2023.

For more information, please visit the website ↗ of the conference