The National Council for Science and the
Environment (NCSE) is pleased to announce the
availability of two publications from our 2007
National Conference on Science, Policy and the
Environment: Integrating Environment and Human
Health. The conference report, Integrating
Environment and Human Health, and Climate,
Poverty and Health: Time for Preventive Medicine,
a report of the 7th Annual John H. Chafee
Memorial Lecture, delivered by Larry Brilliant,
Executive Director of Google.org are now
available in PDF formats at http://www.ncseonline.org/2007conference/
Copies of these reports have been mailed to all
registered participants in this conference. For
those who did not attend the conference, but
would like these reports or reports from previous
NCSE conferences, please visit http://ncseonline.org/NCSEconference/.
A form to order reports can be downloaded at
http://ncseonline.org/04conference/List%20of%20Previous%20Conference%20Reports%201.10.08.doc.
Please email the form to [EMAIL PROTECTED] or
fax to 202.628.4311. NCSE appreciates
contributions of $10 per report to help cover
printing and shipping expenses. Please donate
online at
https://secure.groundspring.org/dn/index.php?aid=16467
or send with the request form to
1101 17th St. NW, Suite 250, Washington, DC 20036
Integrating Environment and Human Health shows
how the health of people and the health of the
planet are intrinsically, intricately, and
intimately interconnected. Despite this, the
fields of health science and practice and
environmental science and practice have grown
increasingly apart over the past half-century.
The report presents a series of prescriptions for
the difficult but necessary task of integration
of environmental and health perspectives.
The report includes recommendations on how to
connect environment and health, developed in 23
breakout sessions are grouped under three major
themes: Decisionmaking in the Real World; Guiding
and Fostering Multi-Disciplinary Research; and
Expanding Understanding: Information, Education, and Communication.
The topics addressed are:
Decisionmaking in the Real World
1. Integrating Environment, Culture and Well-Being
2. Risk and Decisionmaking
3. Population, Gender, Justice and Health
4. The Natural Environment, Built Environment, and Social Environment
5. Ecology of Water and Health
6. The Ocean and Human Health
7. Biodiversity and Health
8. Emerging Infectious Disease and other Health
Implications of Global Changes and Ecological Trends
9. Childrens Minds: Environment, Development and Mental Function
10. Socially-Mediated Linkages between Resource Depletion and Health
11. Energy, Air Quality and Health
Guiding and Fostering Multi-Disciplinary Research
12. Emerging Issues in Environmental Influences on Reproductive Health
13. Setting Research Priorities for Health and the Environment
14. Community-Based Health: Incorporating Social Sciences and Humanities
15. Medical Geology, Physical Sciences, and Health
16. Ecology and Epidemiology
17. Ecological and Human Health Risk Assessment
and Health Impact Assessment of Development Policies, Programs, and Projects
Expanding Understanding: Information, Education and Communication
18. Health Professionals Education and the Environment
19. Bringing Health into Environmental Education
20. Journalists, Mass Media, and Decisionmaking
21. Innovative Uses of Information Technology
22. Designing for Complimentarity among Programs
Generating Environmental and Health Information
23. Measuring the Outcomes of Policies and Programs
The report concludes that:
* Interdisciplinary approaches are essential.
* Systems thinking provides a useful means of understanding the issues.
* Communication must be improved between
environmental and health communities, between
scientists and decisionmakers, between scientists and the public.
* All stakeholders need to be involved early
on and throughout the process of setting science
priorities and moving science to policy and management.
* Particular attention must be provided to
engage often-neglected stakeholders, including
women, children, people from diverse cultures and
other especially vulnerable populations.
* A new interdisciplinary approach must begin
very early in the educational process and continue throughout.
* The specter of rapid global climatic
disruption provides an urgency to bringing these fields together.
Keynote addresses by Howard Frumkin, Director,
National Center for Environmental Health and the
Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry,
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and
Mirta Roses Periago, Director, Pan American
Health Organization, Regional Director, Regional
Offices for the Americas, World Health
Organization are presented in their entirety.
The report includes summaries of plenary
roundtables and symposia, on topics such as
systems thinking, avian influenza and
environmental and health causes and consequences of Hurricane Katrina.
Climate, Poverty and Health: Time for Preventive
Medicine, is an illustrated version of a report
of the 7th Annual John H. Chafee Memorial
Lecture, delivered by Larry Brilliant, Executive
Director of Google.org. Dr. Brilliant is
board-certified in preventive medicine and public
health. He is a founder and director of The Seva
Foundation, which works in dozens of countries
around the world, primarily to eliminate preventable and curable blindness.
Dr. Brilliant described many of the negative
impacts of climate change on human health and
noted that poverty exacerbates the impacts. According to Dr. Brilliant,
"There is still time to act, but we must act
soon. We are already in the stage of secondary
preventionthe Earth has already developed
significant problems, and we are looking to
prevent further disease. I have developed seven
prescriptions for secondary prevention of climate change:
1. Reduce population growth through improving
child survival, educating girls, and improving the availability of choices.
2. Prioritize global health efforts while factoring in climate change.
3. Increase global disaster preparedness and systems.
4. Address the issue of peak water: we need to
be aware of salts potential devastating effects
on water for drinking and growing.
5. Adapt agriculture for a brackish world.
6. Study the unintended consequences of past interventions and learn from them.
7. Develop radical new funding methods for
secondary prevention, adaptation, or risk mitigation."
NCSE is continuing to work for a new integrated
approach to environment and health through a number of follow up activities.
We are seeking to advance integrated
environment-health curriculum through our Council
of Environmental Deans and Directors.
NCSE is co-sponsoring the annual meeting of the
American Institute of Biological Sciences,
Climate, Environment, and Infectious Diseases on
May 12-13, 2008 and will be chairing a plenary
panel: Climate Change and Human Health:
Developing collaborations with the Public Health
Community (www.aibs.org ). We invite you to attend this meeting.
NCSE is also partnering with the American Public
Health Association in National Public Health
Week, April 7-13, 2008 with the theme Climate
Change: Our Health in the Balance (www.nphw.org
). We invite you to participate!
We also are continuing to maintain our
Environment and Health conference website,
www.ncseonline.org/2007conference . Videos and
transcripts from presentations at the conference
are available, as well as PDFs of the enclosed reports.
Finally, NCSE has created an Encyclopedia of the
Earth as a source of information on the
environment, including its connections with
health. See www.eoearth.org to get access to
this information as well find out ways you can contribute.
We are eager to work with you in other efforts to
improve decisionmaking on environmental issues
through a better understanding of the
relationship between environment and
health. Please contact David E. Blockstein,
Ph.D., Conference Chair and Senior Scientist me
at [EMAIL PROTECTED] or 202-207-0004.
Note that Starting February 23, 2008, NCSE will have a new address:
National Council for Science and the Environment
1101 17th St. NW, Suite 250
Washington, DC 20036
The phone and fax numbers, and email addresses will remain the same.
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