Jeroen De Bont

About me

I am a postdoctoral researcher at Karolinska Institutet. I am an environmental scientist and public health specialist by training, and did my PhD in environmental epidemiology at ISGlobal and IDIAP Jordi Gol in Spain. During my PhD I focused on the effects of the urban environment, especially ambient air pollution, on the development of childhood obesity. Nowadays, my main research of interest is evaluating the effect of multiple urban exposures on multiple health outcomes in children and adults across Sweden, Europe and India. I have a special interest in issues related to the environment, public health, urban environment and cardio-metabolic outcomes, especially in lower-middle-income countries and across the different socioeconomic layers. 

Research description

I am currently the PI of the Improvement in CARDIOvascular health by reducing exposure to Air Pollution and NOIse (CARDIO-APNOI) Project, funded by FORMAS and Ulla Hamberg Angeby and Lennart Angeby Foundation. The projects aim to:

• To evaluate the complex mixture of air pollution and noise on adverse cardiovascular events in Scandinavian countries.
• To evaluate how changes in air pollution and noise levels related to residential relocation influence the development of adverse cardiovascular events in multiple Scandinavian countries.
• To systematically evaluate, in multiple adult and administrative cohorts across Europe, the association between air pollution and noise with adverse cardiovascular events and to assess which aspects of the urban exposome have the greatest impact on this association.

Latest publications:

1. de Bont J*, Pickford R*, Åström C, Colomar F, Dimakopoulou K, de Hoogh K, Ibi D, Katsouyanni K, Melén E, Nobile F, Pershagen G, Persson Å, Samoli E, Stafoggia M, Tonne C, Vlaanderen J, Wolf K, Vermeulen R, Peters A, Ljungman P. Mixtures of long-term exposure to ambient air pollution, built environment and temperature and stroke incidence across Europe. Environ Int. 2023 Aug 9;179:108136. doi: 10.1016/j.envint.2023.108136. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 37598594.

2. de Bont, J*., Stafoggia, M*., Nakstad, B., Hajat, S., Kovats, S., Part, C., Chersich, M., Luchters, S., Filippi, V., Stephansson, O., Ljungman, P., Roos, N., 2022. Associations between ambient temperature and risk of preterm birth in Sweden: A comparison of analytical approaches. Environ Res 213, 113586. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.ENVRES.2022.113586.

3. de Bont, J*., Jaganathan, S*., Dahlquist, M., Persson, Å., Stafoggia, M., Ljungman, P., 2022a. Ambient air pollution and cardiovascular diseases: An umbrella review of systematic reviews and meta-analyses. Journal of Internal Medicine. https://doi.org/10.1111/joim.13467 (PMID: 35138681)

4. Saucy A, Gehring U, Olmos S, Delpierre C, de Bont J, Gruzieva O, et al. Effect of residential relocation on environmental exposures in European cohorts: An exposome-wide approach. Environ Int. 2023 Mar 1; 173:107849. (PMID: 36889121)

5. Warkentin, S., de Bont, J., Abellan, A., Pistillo, A., Saucy, A., Cirach, M., Nieuwenhuijsen, M., Khalid, S., Basagaña, X., Duarte-Salles, T., Vrijheid, M., 2023. Changes in air pollution exposure after residential relocation and body mass index in children and adolescents: A natural experiment study. Environmental Pollution 334, 122217. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.ENVPOL.2023.122217

Education

2021: Postdoctoral researcher at Karolinska Institutet

2020: PhD in biomedicine at ISGlobal and IDIAP Jordi Gol "Urban environment, air pollution and childhood growth and obesity"

2017: Master in Public Health at Universitat Pompeu Fabra

2013: Bachelor in Environmental Sciences at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

Academic honours, awards and prizes

Best poster award at the USA-European exposome symposium, May 2023 Brescia, Italy. Poster titled “Environmental exposures and stroke incidence across Europe”