219654 Health Impact Assessment in the National Environmental Policy Act: Leveraging Resources across Federal Agencies for Environmental Health and Informed Decision-Making

Tuesday, November 9, 2010 : 1:00 PM - 1:15 PM

Sarah Heaton Kennedy, MPH , Healthy Community Design Initiative, National Center for Environmental Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA
Ntale Kajumba, MPH , NEPA Program Office, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Atlanta, GA
Andrew L. Dannenberg, MD, MPH , National Center for Environmental Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA
The National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) mandates federal agencies evaluate the environmental effects of significant federal actions through an environmental impact assessment process. Through NEPA's interdisciplinary framework, water, air, and other land-use issues are routinely examined. However, human health, environmental justice, and children's health are emerging areas for analysis and mitigation and have the potential to be improved through the NEPA process. As agencies responsible for complying, cooperating and commenting on federal actions under NEPA, EPA and CDC can provide technical assistance and recommendations to other federal agencies on health analysis and mitigation strategies. Consequently, coordination between these two federal agencies for the purpose of improving public health outcomes through NEPA warrants consideration. A pilot partnership agreement has been established between the two agencies to advance mutual environmental public health goals and strengthen the bridge between environmental and public health impact assessment. This pilot partnership is intended to increase coordination and determine whether leveraging respective expertise and resources between EPA regional offices and CDC/NCEH will enhance public health considerations and mitigation within NEPA and other environmental assessment processes that guide decision-making affecting the natural and built environment. An overview of EPA and CDC's NEPA jurisdiction, opportunities for public health considerations in NEPA, components of the CDC-EPA Partnership Agreement and the ways in which state and local agencies can leverage resources to enhance public health considerations in regional NEPA projects will be presented and discussed.

Learning Areas:
Environmental health sciences
Public health or related public policy
Systems thinking models (conceptual and theoretical models), applications related to public health

Learning Objectives:
1) Participants will be able to describe how NEPA can impact public health, environmental justice, and children’s health 2) Participants will be able to explain EPA and CDC’s jurisdiction in NEPA and the recently established Partnership Agreement between the Agencies 3) Participants will be able to describe how their state, local, or community level agency can participate in NEPA to improve public health outcomes in their region

Keywords: Environmental Health, Partnerships

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I am qualified to present because I am a NEPA project manager commenting on federal activities in SE as well as co-lead from EPA on the CDC and EPA partnership agreement on which this presentation is focused.”
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.