Symposium 8: Drug-Environment Interactions: Real-World Studies Across the Life Course
Tracks
Track 2
| Sunday, November 1, 2026 |
| 11:00 - 12:30 |
| Lecture Theatre 1 |
Details
Medication effectiveness and safety may vary according to environmental exposures, including ambient air pollution, temperature, and extreme weather events. Susceptibility to these drug–environment interactions may also differ across the life course because of age-related physiology, comorbidity burden, polypharmacy, treatment patterns, and differences in environmental exposure. Fit-for-purpose real-world data and rigorous analytical approaches are needed to identify clinically meaningful interactions and translate findings into treatment, surveillance, and policy decisions.
This 90-minute symposium will present international pharmacoepidemiologic and environmental health studies examining how environmental conditions may affect medication effects and health outcomes from childhood through older adulthood. Presentations will demonstrate approaches for integrating medication, clinical, environmental, and population-level data; estimating drug–environment interactions; and interpreting findings for clinical care, pharmacovigilance, and public health policy.
Introduction. Rationale for drug-environment interaction studies by life stage and the importance of identifying sources of differential susceptibility across populations.
Soko Setoguchi
Children- Effect modification of asthma therapy by ambient air pollution and temperature in pediatric populations. at scale. Lizbeth Gomez
Older Adults- Heightened vulnerability arising from multimorbidity and polypharmacy among older adults in Taiwan
Yea-huei Kao Yang
Older Adults – Geographical and Temporal Antimicrobial Resistance and Antibiotic Utilization in Australian Long-Term Care Facilities
Chloe Smit
Special Population (Cancer)- Environmental modification of treatment effects and outcomes in adults with serious chronic disease, including air-pollution-associated outcome risk in real-world cohorts and considerations specific to cancer survivors.
Benjamin Bates
Panel Discussion. Synthesis of effect modification across populations, evidentiary thresholds for population-specific action, and implications for study design. Led by Lisa Pond and Soko Setoguchi
At the conclusion of the symposium, participants will be able to:
1. Describe how environmental exposures may modify medication effectiveness and safety across different stages of life.
2. Identify clinical, behavioral, and population characteristics that may contribute to differential susceptibility to drug–environment interactions.
3. Evaluate data-linkage and analytic approaches for combining medication, clinical, and environmental information in real-world studies.
4. Discuss how evidence regarding drug–environment interactions may inform clinical care, pharmacovigilance, and population-specific policy decisions.
This symposium will benefit pharmacoepidemiologists, environmental health researchers, clinicians, pharmacovigilance professionals, data scientists, and investigators interested in studying medication outcomes using linked real-world data.
Speaker
Ms. Lisa Pont
Associate Head Of School
University of Technology Sydney
Symposium Moderator
Biography
Dr. Lisa Pont is a registered pharmacist and Professor in the Discipline of Pharmacy, Graduate School of Health at the University of Technology Sydney. She has a PhD in Clinical Pharmacology on Quality Use of Medicines from the University of Groningen in The Netherlands where she explored the development and validation of prescribing indicators for measuring quality of prescribing in general practice.
Dr Benjamin Bates
Rutgers University
Symposium Presenter
Biography
Dr. Bates is Assistant Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and the Rutgers School of Public Health, and a core member of the Center for Pharmacoepidemiology and Treatment Science at the Rutgers Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research. His research combines large healthcare databases, including administrative claims, disease registries, and electronic health records, with mixed methods to evaluate cancer treatment patterns, care delivery, and health outcomes among people with cancer. His current NCI-funded work examines treatment disruption and subsequent outcomes among patients with breast cancer following severe storms, and develops strategies to mitigate disruption and address health needs after extreme weather.
Prof Yea-Huei Kao Yang
National Cheng Kung University
Symposium Presenter
Biography
Dr. Yea-Huei Kao Yang is Professor Emeritus at the Institute of Clinical Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, National Cheng Kung University, where she founded and directs the Health Outcome Research Center and the Center for Pharmaceutical Regulatory Science. Trained as a pharmacist at National Taiwan University, she directed the Department of Pharmacy at NCKU Hospital before moving into academic pharmacoepidemiology. Her research applies Taiwan's National Health Insurance data to drug safety and comparative effectiveness questions in older adults, with particular attention to adverse drug reactions, antipsychotic and cardiovascular drug safety, and signal detection methods.
Dr Chloe CH Smit
Associate Lecturer
University of Technology Sydney
Symposium Presenter
Biography
Dr. Chloé Smit is a pharmacist and Associate Lecturer in Pharmacy at the Graduate School of Health, University of Technology Sydney (UTS). Her research interests include pharmacoepidemiology, antimicrobial resistance (AMR), One Health, sustainable healthcare, and quality use of medicines. Her PhD examined risk factors for antimicrobial resistance in community-acquired Escherichia coli urinary tract infections, with a particular focus on geographic differences in resistance patterns. Her research experience includes pharmacoepidemiology, geospatial health analytics, the use of large healthcare datasets, and medicines safety.
Dr. Lizbeth Gomez
Postdoctoral Associate
Rutgers University
Symposium Presenter
Biography
Dr. Gomez is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Rutgers Center for Climate, Health, and Healthcare and her research focuses on environmental pharmacoepidemiology, examining how climate and environmental factors modify pharmaceutical treatment effectiveness in respiratory conditions, particularly asthma. Dr. Gomez completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine in the Division of Pulmonary, Allergy and Critical Care Medicine, where she conducted real-world evidence research using electronic health records to evaluate asthma biologics effectiveness and healthcare utilization patterns.
