Project Listing

Changing Environment & Human Health

Title: Inuit Health in Transition: A study of the impact of changing environments society and climate on health and disease among the Inuit and Yupik of the circumpolar North (Inuit Health in Transition)

Summary of Activity

A baseline survey will be carried out among people aged 18 and above with Inuit/Yupik ancestry from across Greenland, Alaska, Canadian North and Chukotka. It is the aim to recruit 12,000 participants. During the same 3-4 hour visit, participants will be interviewed, go through paraclinical examinations and have a blood sample drawn. The study will have its emphasis on diet and physical activity but other lifestyle factors that are known to have an effect on chronic disease, such as smoking, contaminants, and social and cultural factors will also be included. This will give a cross-sectional description of the associations between the environment, living conditions, life style, risk factors and existing disease. The cross sectional baseline survey will provide us with a solid hint about the positive and negative effects of the current diet, and a follow-up after ten years will be able to pinpoint causal effects. Data collection started in Nunavik in 2004 and will start in Greenland in 2005. The data collection period will, however, reach well into the IPY. The Inuit and Yupik live scattered over a vast area often with difficult access to the villages. For many of the smaller communities especially in Greenland and Canada the most cost-effective strategy is a ship. We will use the CCGS Amundsen through the Canadian research program ArcticNet (www.arcticnet .ulaval.ca), a research ice-breaker with all the necessary laboratory and examination facilities and we will tour the coast of West Greenland and the Eastern Canadian Arctic in Fall 2006 then in the Beaufort Sea in 2008 (Alaska, Inuvik region and Chukotka in Russia). The possibilities for inviting media persons and artists to join the expedition will be considered in order to facilitate cultural exchange between the communities and countries visited.

Contact:

Professor Peter Bjerregaard
National Institute of Public Health
Øster Farimagsgade 5
Copenhagen K
DK-1399
Denmark
Tel: (45) 3920 7777
Mobile: (45) 2097 1222
Fax: (45) 3920 8010
Email: pb@niph.dk