272085 Environmental determinants of health across the life course: Multiple opportunities for health promoting interventions

Monday, October 29, 2012 : 2:30 PM - 2:50 PM

Ted Schettler, MD, MPH , Science and Environmental Health Network, Bolinas, CA
        
Our food, built, chemical, natural, psychosocial, and socioeconomic environments all play important roles in determining our health throughout life. Environmental factors throughout life are strong determinants of health decades later. Opportunities for health promoting interventions occur at multiple life stages as well as in multiple environments. Reproductive, children's, midlife, and elder health are inherently interconnected. Positive and negative features of our biological, social and natural environments, alone and in combination, can affect health at any time in the life continuum and the health of future generations, through a variety of mechanisms. By addressing the interrelationships of health status and the environment throughout life, utilizing common sense and innovative approaches, we are able to prevent chronic disease, foster health, and sustain local and global economies. Furthermore, interventions that address the structural, systemic origins of many diseases can be designed to benefit ecosystems more generally, thereby linking human health to planetary health. This session will address multi-level environmental determinants of health and cross-cutting measures to help build resilience and promote health across generations.

Learning Areas:
Implementation of health education strategies, interventions and programs

Learning Objectives:
1) Describe causal relationships among multi-level environmental factors and common diseases, including diabetes, cardiovascular disorders, dementia, and some kinds of cancer. 2) Identify some of the biologic mechanisms connecting environmental variables to these diseases 3) Explain that many of the drivers of common chronic diseases are also drivers of climate change and other manifestations of environmental degradation 4) List cross-cutting interventions that address both chronic disease patterns and environmental degradation.

Keywords: Environmental Exposures, Environmental Health

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I am the Science Director of the Science and Environmental Health Network (www.sehn.org; science director of the Collaborative on Health and Environment (www.healthandenvironment.org); and science advisor to Health Care Without Harm (www.noharm.org). I have a medical degree from Case Western Reserve University and an MPH from Harvard University. I am co-author of “Generations at Risk: Reproductive Health and the Environment”; “In Harm's Way: Toxic Threats to Child Development”; and "Environmental Threats to Healthy Aging".
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.

Back to: 3329.0: Healthy environments across generations