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Stephanie R. Miles-Richardson, DVM, PhD1, Rueben C Warren, DDS, MPH, DrPH1, Felicia Pharagood-Wade, MD, FACEP2, and Bailus Walker, PhD, MPH3. (1) National Center for Environmental Health/ Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, CDC/ATSDR, 1600 Clifton Rd., NE., MS-E28, Atlanta, GA 30333, 404-498-0111, rcw4@cdc.gov, (2) Division of Health Education and Promotion, Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, Mailstop E-33, 1600 Clifton Road, Atlanta, GA 30333, (3) Environmental and Occupational Medicine, Howard University College of Medicine, Community Health and Family Practice, Washington, DC, DC 20059
Assuring environmental health is a global public health concern. While public health is geared toward prevention, many populations are already burdened by environmental exposures and adverse health effects. This presentation discusses the disproportionate burden imposed on selected populations due to environmental exposure and uses the Presidential Executive Order 12898 on Environmental Justice to recommend pubic health action. Environmental science continues to grapple with strategies to assess, evaluate, regulate, and manage multilevel environmental challenges. Meanwhile, individuals have real or perceived health concerns they attribute to environmental exposures. Often those exposed who live on or near hazardous waste sites already have preexisting health conditions and have heightened psychological stressors due to “perceived” vulnerability. When cause/effect associations are established between adverse health effects and environmental exposure, appropriate public health actions usually result. However, other methods of assessment are needed when evidence is not clear. Ample evidence, latency period, cumulative risk, vulnerability, and susceptibility are concepts worth considering when delivering appropriate public health actions. These populations, identified as “Communities of Concern” by the Institute of Medicine, are at risk in large part because of where they live, work, and/or play. Therefore, understanding that the environment is more than geography is essential if appropriate interventions are expected. There is growing literature that supports the increasing need for environmental public health, environmental medicine, and minority health. While these constructs are separate, the common thread is environmental justice. Through targeted public health actions, matters of environmental justice can be reduced, mitigated, and perhaps totally eliminated.
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.