Participants of the meeting came from the Central Government, (Ministry
of Public Health, Welfare and Sports, State Health Inspectorate and the
Ministry of Housing, Physical Planning and Environment), from local
authorities (Provinces, Regional Health Services) and from RIVM. Aim of
the workshop was to discuss the functionality of monitoring systems as
desired by risk managers and policy makers, in relation to the available
methods, existing information databases and research tools. The
programme of the workshop included presentations on backgrounds of
monitoring, on information needs among the risk managers and policy
makers, on developments in (physical) environment and in public health
research, on health impact indicators of environmental pollution, and on
the functionality of monitoring systems. Furthermore, based on examples
of specific monitoring questions, the participants discussed about the
effect-sizes to detect and the implications for the sizes of the
monitoring programme, and the consequences of false-positive and
false-negative results for the decisions based on these results. In the
main discussion at the end of the workshop it was emphasized that each
monitoring activity should be tested against the criteria discussed in
the workshop. Monitoring programmes should be set up very selectively,
on a situation-specific basis. Initiators of monitoring programmes can
be both risk managers/policy makers and researchers ; in the design
phase it is crucial to have consultations between both parties about the
objectives, expectations about effect-size to be detected by the
monitoring system, feasibility and reliability of a monitoring programme
in terms of type-I and type-II errors. Based on these consultations,
sound decisions cab be made about the desirability and about the design
of such (usually multi year) programmes.