 | The 131st Annual Meeting (November 15-19, 2003) of APHA |
|
| The 131st Annual Meeting (November 15-19, 2003) of APHA |
Devon Payne-Sturges, DrPH, Office of Policy National Center for Environmental Economics, U.S. EPA, Ariel Rios Bldg. MC1809T, 1200 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, Washington, DC 20460, 202 566-2316, payne-sturges.devon@epa.gov and Gilbert C Gee, PhD, Health Behavior and Health Education, University of Michigan, 1420 Washington Heights, Rm M5224, Ann Arbor, MI 48103.
There is continuing concern that minority and economically disadvantaged communities bear a disproportionate share of the risks and exposure and or exposure-related health effects from environmental pollutants. These issues gained national attention through publications such as the 1987 report by the Commission on Racial Justice of the United Church of Christ, Toxic Waste and Race in the United States, and Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class and Environmental Quality (1990) by Dr. Robert Bullard. Major scientific conferences were held to address environmental justice. In 1994 President Clinton signed an executive order requiring all federal agencies to work towards ending the disproportionate exposures of minority and poor people to many environmental hazards. Yet, more than a decade later, however, we do not have a framework to assess, from a national perspective, the impact of efforts to improve environmental health of minority and disadvantaged communities. The current focus of HHS on eliminating health disparities and a surge in interest by the public health community to establish a national environmental health tracking system present the opportunity to develop national public health indicators that can be used to gauge the success of policies and programs to bring about environmental justice. To this end, I conducted a literature review of environmental health research that focussed on minority populations to identify key issues and categorized them by type (e.g. hazard, exposure and health outcome). Based on this review and identification of national data sets, recommendations for national indicators for environmental health of minority populations are presented.
Learning Objectives:
Keywords: Environmental Justice,
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.