 |
The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA |
|
The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA |
Sondip Mathur, PhD, Management and Policy Sciences, School of Public Health University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, 1200 Herman Pressler, Houston, TX 77030, 713-5009188, smathur@sph.uth.tmc.edu
Sustainability implies continuing a lifestyle and interaction without lessening, and it requires community decision making to fully account for the interdependencies among related local and global, natural and built environments. Consequently, a sustainable community must make decisions that are responsive to small pieces of information that contain information about the status of the larger system. Central to the issue of sustainability are these pieces of information, their source, scope, availability, and frameworks of use. While defining a "community" as a group of people who live and interact in a specific location, business and organizational decision makers hold the key when it comes to adherence to the precepts of community sustainability. Accordingly, it is often noted that most community decisions are routinely based on signals emanating from a socially suboptimal decentralized market process, and alternative decision frameworks must be explored. The purpose of this presentation is to briefly examine economic and ecological desision frameworks for their informational content, highlight how supplementary nonmarket frameworks may help decision makers identify instances of socially inefficient decision making, underscore opportunities for corrective actions, and emphasize the community role. In particular, given the interdependencies between social and ecological wellbeing, the examination aims to stimulate discussion among public health professionals on the formulation of effective strategies for enduring health and community sustainability.
Learning Objectives:
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.