Special Interest Groups Overview
In November 2024 ISEE approved the formation of up to 5 Special Interest Groups to hold inaugural meetings at the ISEE 2025 annual meeting. Special Interest Groups (SIGs) are intended to provide a venue for ISEE members to network with other colleagues with similar interests and to provide a forum to discuss relevant topics. Members wishing to start a SIG were asked to identify a person or persons willing to take responsibility for chairing the SIG for a period of at least 2 years. They would need to provide a list of at least 15 ISEE members willing to join the SIG. Each SIG would be considered provisional until 30 members have joined.
Each SIG chair is expected to organize a 60-minute meeting at each ISEE annual meeting. The format of the meeting is at the discretion of the chair. The meeting might include one guest speaker on a relevant topic, followed by a panel discussion. Alternatively, it might be a debate about an issue of concern in the topic area, or simply an open forum to raise issues of interest to those working on the specific topic.
Current Special Interest Groups
Below is a list of current groups. If you are interested in getting involved or starting your own SIG, contact the ISEE Secretariat for details.
Quantitative Bias Analysis (QBA) Special Interest Group The Quantitative Bias Analysis (QBA) SIG brings together researchers, students, and practitioners who seek to strengthen environmental epidemiology by explicitly evaluating the impact of systematic error—especially misclassification, uncontrolled confounding, and selection bias—on study results. The SIG promotes accessible, transparent approaches to QBA, from simple deterministic calculations to probabilistic methods, and highlights emerging tools, software, and teaching resources that support wider adoption across the field.
Through webinars, conference programming, case studies, and collaborative projects, the SIG provides a forum for learning, peer support, and methodological exchange. A key goal is to help environmental epidemiologists incorporate QBA routinely into research, evidence synthesis, and regulatory decision-making, improving the credibility and interpretability of epidemiologic findings. The SIG also works to lower implementation barriers by sharing examples, code (e.g., Stata, R), and templates that can be directly applied in practice.
Contact: David Miller
Email: qba@iseepi.org
The aims of this ISEE Special Interest Group (SIG) are to:
- Provide a platform for various stakeholders to connect and collaborate with colleagues, worldwide, who share a scientific interest in pesticides and health topics.
- Establish a global scientific forum to exchange data, knowledge, foster collaboration, and develop scientific consortia that address health challenges posed by pesticides across diverse populations and vulnerable groups, at either local or regional or global scales.
We invite expressions of interest from members who wish to join this ISEE SIG on Pesticides and Health.
- We particularly encourage scientists from low- and middle-income countries to participate.
- There is no membership fee to join.
Contact: Brenda Eskenazi and Konstantinos Makris
Email: pesticides@iseepi.org
Small island states are among the most severely affected by the detrimental impacts of environmental change. Health, among other sectors, bears a high burden of adverse environmental impacts, which remain subtle and unrecognized in many cases. The Epidemiological Methods and Results for Small Island States group will facilitate the exchange of knowledge and experiences, identify capacity-building resources, support learning and development, and establish a think tank to promote the application of context-appropriate research and transformation to health action in small island states. We welcome experiences and lessons from work across the globe in environmental factors that have bearing on cancer and other non-communicable diseases in small island states. The presentations and discussions will feature the collaborative base of researchers, practitioners, and policy change-makers, to disseminate adaptable and relevant research and applications tailored to the unique context of small island states.
Contact: Dr. Lindonne Telesford, Associate Professor, St. George's University, Grenada
Email: emr@iseepi.org
Contact: Stephanie Grady, Junenette Peters, Danielle Vienneau
Email: noise@iseepi.org
The Special Interest Group on Climate Change and Health aims to provide a forum for ISEE members to initiate and discuss research on climate change and health and identify research gaps with the potential for developing collaborative research. This SIG will also explore how ISEE can be most effective in advocacy to support more ambitious local to global negotiations and actions at the nexus of health and climate change mitigation, adaptation and resilience.
Following announcements of the launch of this SIG and numerous expressions of interest by ISEE members, the SIG held a first hybrid meeting at the annual ISEE conference in Atlanta.
Activities of this SIG will include:
- periodic virtual meetings, and a hybrid meeting at the annual ISEE conference
- Liaison with pertinent ISEE committees and regional chapters
- Additional singular and serial activities (symposia at the annual ISEE conference, pre- conference WS, webinars)
- an online platform (minutes, news, archives of resources, etc.)
Covering the following topics
- Capacity building, teaching, curricula development, webinars
- Research presentations of ongoing work and results; new funding opportunities
- Policy, statements, actions, updates and opportunities for engagement
Contact: Kurt Straif
Email: climate@iseepi.org
Contact: Rachit Sharma
Email: ser@iseepi.org
Contact: Beate Ritz
Email: aceh@iseepi.org
Website: https://www.iseepi.org/armed_conflict_environmental.php