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| Copyright 2012, R. Steven Konkel |
In addition to traditional roles in food safety inspection, providing clean drinking water, injury prevention, ensuring proper wastewater disposal, ambient air, terrorism and all-hazards response, disaster/emergency response, workplace health and safety, hazardous materials/toxic substances, vector control and zoonotic diseases, and a myriad of other roles, today’s sustainability challenges require environmental health practitioners to be knowledgeable in the design of healthy living environments. By making investments in more sustainable communities, we can protect people from environmental stressors that adversely impact public health. As the impacts of climate change become more prevalent, environmental health practitioners can work in teams with other public health professionals, engineers, scientists and planners, crafting solutions to build more sustainable communities. This will have an ancillary benefit of making possible choices that enhance the quality of life as well as address some of the public health issues driving the increases in healthcare costs, such as obesity and Type II diabetes. Sustainable communities work for all of us. Investment in prevention saves resources as well as lives.
This presentation provides an overview of the accumulating evidence on the impacts of climate change on environmental conditions. Based on research on the design parameters for healthy communities, environmental health and land use planning skills can lead to effective adaptation responses to key impacts of climate change. We can also expand public health choices and invest in sustainable utilities that move us towards environmental sustainability. We can build on environmental health knowledge in critical areas such as managing water and wastewater resources, and collaborate with other disciplines to design solutions for sustainable energy as well as sustainable communities.
Our contributions to climate change and sustainability will be facilitated by the way we think about our role and the role of the institutions where we work, the academic training and education that we offer, and our efforts in practice to create the future.
This presentation provides an overview of the accumulating evidence on the impacts of climate change on environmental conditions. Based on research on the design parameters for healthy communities, environmental health and land use planning skills can lead to effective adaptation responses to key impacts of climate change. We can also expand public health choices and invest in sustainable utilities that move us towards environmental sustainability. We can build on environmental health knowledge in critical areas such as managing water and wastewater resources, and collaborate with other disciplines to design solutions for sustainable energy as well as sustainable communities.
Our contributions to climate change and sustainability will be facilitated by the way we think about our role and the role of the institutions where we work, the academic training and education that we offer, and our efforts in practice to create the future.
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