The mission of the Population Health Assessment team is to evaluate the health status and health determinants of various population groups and to measure the impact of health care interventions. These will generate data for healthcare professionals and health authorities to design new strategies or ameliorate current policies to improve Population Health.
Presently, the Population Health Assessment team is organized in 4 main topics with the following main aims:

MICROELEMENTS IN HEALTH AND DISEASE: Evaluate how the new policy of recommending iodine supplementation in preconception, pregnancy and lactation impact on the prevalence of iodine deficiency in pregnant women from the Minho region of Portugal, and whether timing of iodine supplementation initiation influences maternal thyroid function and psychomotor development of children.

INFECTIOUS DISEASES: i) Identify individuals with latent tuberculosis, through an unprecedented, detailed characterization of the immune response of blood leukocytes to two Mtb glycolipids, using mass-cytometry and secretome analysis. ii) Identify and understand risk behaviours for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) transmission/infection and identify awareness, motivation and willingness to use PrEP or antiretroviral therapy. iii) Develop new diagnostic and prognostic tools of SARSCOV2 infection, by uncovering new prognostic biomarkers, prediction models and treatment strategies

NON-INFECTIONS RESPIRATORY CHRONIC DISEASES: i) Epi-Asthma: population-based nationwide cross-sectional study to determine the prevalence of asthma in Portugal, characterize patients with asthma underdiagnosis and misdiagnosis and to develop and validate a clinical prediction model to support asthma diagnosis. ii) Studies on chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) intend to estimate the prevalence of COPD in Portugal and to characterize COPD patients and to assess the feasibility and value of an interactive telemonitoring system for earlier detection and supported management of COPD exacerbations.

CARDIOMETABOLIC DISEASES: Ongoing studies on vascular and brain aging, using chronobiologic asynchrony intend to i) phenotype representative samples of the Iberian population. ii) Search for new circulating, imaging and functional biomarkers for early detection of subjects at risk of cardiovascular and cognitive diseases. iii) Establish new cost-effective interventions to reduce the expression of risk phenotypes. iv) Establish longitudinal population-based studies to evaluate the prevalence of risk phenotypes and measure the impact of planned interventions.