Risk-benefit assessment (RBA) of foods is a decision-support tool that assesses the combined beneficial and adverse health effects of foods, diets or food components. It integrates knowledge on nutrition, toxicology, microbiology, and human epidemiology for comprehensive health impact assessments. RBA is thus useful to inform food safety policies or to provide dietary advice based on an integration of the available scientific knowledge. This e-learning provides an introduction to risk-benefit assessment of foods, with an emphasis on methods to quantify the human health impact of food intake. Since RBA is a multidisciplinary approach by nature, participants will learn how methods from epidemiology, toxicological and microbiological risk assessment and nutrition integrate in the assessments. Participants will be guided through the methodology, as well as the challenges associated with RBA and the quantification of human health impact of food intake. This will be done by a combination of theory provided in lectures, and group work. Group work will follow one single case study, which will evolve to illustrate a risk-benefit assessment process. Exercises will be implemented in an Excel workbook, illustrating the application of the widely used Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALY) as common health metric to express disease burden and introducing additional methods for multiple effects assessment presented in the updated EFSA Guidance.By the end of the course, participants will be able to:
- Understand the utility of risk-benefit assessment and its applications to inform policy in the areas of public health and food safety
- Identify the underlying disciplines of risk-benefit assessment of foods
- Define the core elements of a risk-benefit assessment
- Select and apply methods to evaluate and calculate the adverse and beneficial impact of foods on health based on knowledge from the underlying disciplines
- Identify the uncertainties in a risk-benefit assessment
- Evaluate the (quantitative) output of a risk-benefit assessment
- Evaluate the application, communication and management of risk-benefit assessment in foods
This e-learning package comprises the above described e-learning, including lectures, group work and "hands-on" elements, and a wrap-up webinar with the tutors, during which participants can ask their questions.
Who will be admitted?
The course is open for all staff members, including EFSA’s Scientific Committee/Panels and their working groups and members of the EFSA Networks. This course is also available for members of other European agencies and European institutions on the List of Competent Organizations (also known as Article 36 List) that are eligible to receive EFSA’s grants. Registrants from other affiliations are not eligible. EFSA reserves the right to select the trainees from all registered persons. If the number of eligible registrants exceeds the number of available places, the first-come, first served principle will be applied. After the registration deadline, all registrants will be informed, and the selected trainees will receive login data for the e-learning platform.
Fraunhofer Institute for Toxicology and Experimental Medicine
