Professor Francesco Forastiere honoured with 2022 John Goldsmith Award

Prof Francesco Forastiere has been honoured with the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology's prestigious 2022 John Goldsmith Award.

The John Goldsmith Award has been awarded annually by the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology (ISEE) since 1999 to investigators for “sustained and outstanding contributions to the knowledge and practice of environmental epidemiology.” Recipients have typically contributed substantively and innovatively to the methods and practice of epidemiology over many years.

Professor Forastiere is a Visiting Professor in the Environmental Research Group within Imperial's School of Public Health.

Professor Forastiere’s research has focused on the impacts on human health caused by exposure to environmental pollution. He has focused on applying innovative scientific research methods, including health impact assessment, to many public health issues, such as air pollution, radon, waste disposal, occupational exposure to silica and asbestos, environmental tobacco smoke, and, more recently Covid-19. Professor Forastiere has been conferred the ISEE John Goldsmith Award for his lifelong efforts and innovative contributions to the development of the field of environmental epidemiology, which has led to sustainable and outstanding contributions to society.

The award ceremony took place in Athens on 20 September 2022, during the 34th Annual Conference of the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology (ISEE 2022). Professor Forastiere is highly honoured to receive the award and to be the second Italian recipient of the prize after professor Benedetto Terracini in 2003.

About Professor Francesco Forastiere

Professor Francesco Forastiere is a medical doctor (1978), a specialist in occupational medicine (1982), a Master of Science in epidemiology (LSHTM, UK, 1982), PhD in Epidemiology (Linkoeping University, Sweden, 1994). He has served for 37 years as a public health officer at the Department of Epidemiology, Lazio Region Health Service, Rome, dealing with environmental and occupational exposures and their impacts on health.

He has studied the health effects of numerous environmental and occupational exposures. He has been PI in several EC funded projects since the Fourth Framework Programme up to the most recent Horizon initiatives. Professor Forastiere has authored or co-authored more than 600 full papers in the peer-reviewed scientific literature and been a temporary adviser for WHO/Geneva/Bonn on several occasions, he has contributed to the WHO Air Quality Guidelines in 2005 and the updates published in September 2021. He has been a member of three Monographs Working Groups in Lyon at IARC for the evaluation of some chemicals (vol. 54, 1992), air pollution (Vol. 109, 2013), and some organophosphate insecticides and herbicides (Vol.112, 2015). He was the Chair of the ISEE Conference in Rome in 2016. He is currently a Visiting Professor with the Environmental Research Groups at Imperial College, London and an associate researcher at the National Research Council (CNR) in Palermo.