Health inequalities and indoor environments: Research challenges and priorities

This special issue explores how indoor environments affect health inequalities, inequities and injustices. Despite the recognition of the importance of the built environment for health – in particular, the indoor environment – as a crucial health improvement policy domain, major methodological and evidence gaps emerged. The small number of appropriate studies identified for inclusion is partly attributed to limited collaboration between relevant research, policy and practice communities, such as between the built environment and public health sector. Data availability and integration challenges were also identified as a significant barrier to robust analysis of the role of indoor environments for health inequalities at different scales, settings and populations. The complexity of these challenges and the value of developing novel methods for linking diverse datasets are highlighted by the five papers published in the special issue. They emphasise the role of governance and local policy in shaping the built environment, but also outline the potential to improve indoor environments through behaviour change. They also highlight how the complex links between building performance, outdoor conditions and structural inequalities related to occupant socio-economic status can result in inequalities in exposure to indoor risk factors and in health outcomes, including mental health. Policy action should be prioritised over putting the onus on individuals to create safe and healthy indoor environments for all. Policy instruments could include planning and building regulations, financial and reputation incentives, capacity-building, information and awareness campaigns. A series of future research recommendations is provided that includes the development of shared protocols that facilitate data collection on both health, socio-demographic and built-environment data, as well as ethics clearance, sharing and linkage, to ensure the optimisation of funding allocation; the adoption of crowdsourcing, low-cost, smart and wearable technology; and the fostering of inter- and transdisciplinary research for mutual understanding of built-environment and health equity among researchers, practitioners and policymakers.