BEST-COST: Burden of disease based methods for estimating the socio-economic cost of environmental stressors

The overall objective of BEST-COST is to improve methodologies for the socio-economic cost assessment of environmental stressors to

enhance regular usage of economic and health modelling in policy impact assessments and policy evaluation by EU and national public authorities, and
promote harmonised and consensual population health, quality of life and economic metrics for integrative socio-economic assessments of environmental pollution in Europe and health impact and cost-benefit assessments of related policies.

Objectives

Specific objectives of BEST-COST divided in work packages (WP):

Improved and consensual burden of disease framework for estimating the health impact of environmental stressors. To critically assess and strengthen the current burden of disease framework for environmental noise and air pollution, propose new methodology for taking into account correlated outdoor exposures, and develop a harmonised approach for indoor and outdoor exposures to the same stressors (WP1).
Novel and harmonised methodology for monetising burden of disease estimates of environmental stressors. (WP2).
Coherent methodological framework for assessing the extent of social inequalities in the socio-economic cost of environmental stressors. (WP3).
Open access code for consensus methodologies. (WP4).
Implementation in five EU countries. (WP5).
Knowledge and methodology transferability. To transfer the methodologies to other stressors and other countries and ensure that they are useful, usable and used (WP6).