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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Richard Levins, PhD, Department of Population and International Health, Harvard University, School of Public Health, Building I Room 1109, 665 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115, 617-432-1484, humaneco@hsph.harvard.edu

Schmalhausen's Law states that organisms near the boundary of their tolerance, in extreme or unusual environments along any one dimension of their life requirements are highly sensitive to perturbations of all their life requirements. This creates a generalized vulnerability that links otherwise unrelated diseases and makes the study of vulnerability central to the health of populations. Increased vulnerability is seen in greater variability of outcomes in response to even trivial differences of circumstance, making the variability an object of interest in its own right and not just a tool for estimating mean values. Resilience and resistance to stressors erode during a lifetime of coping, more rapidly in populations that are closer to their boundaries. Geographic variability of outcomes depend on the variability of exposure and the resources for resistance and response. The relative risk matrix and spectra are introduced as tools for examining patterns of vulnerability and focus on the strengthening of resistance and resilience as strategy for health improvement.

Learning Objectives:

• To understand the unique sensitivity to degradation of systems at the boundary of their tolerance
• To present new tools for assessing the vulnerability of human and ecological systems that can lead to preventive strategies for the future

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Any relevant financial relationships? No