Five Things You Should Know About Environmental Public Health
As an environmental health nonprofit, BREATHE LA’s work intersects two very important issues, with a specific focus on lung health and air pollution. A recent lecture through Tulane University and University of Alabama at Birmingham* explored the field on a broader level that easily relates to BREATHE LA’s work.
1. The CDC considers climate change implications as a priority consideration for public health. The field is continually changing as the environment changes.
To learn more about BREATHE LA’s work in climate change, attend one of our upcoming events in our Green Salon Series 2011: Moving LA Into A Clean Green Future.
2. Modern Environmental Public Health is based on Systems Theory, particularly on the work of Ludwig von Bertalanffy, who said: “Classical science…tried to isolate the elements of the observed universe…expecting that, by putting them together again, the whole or system…would result and be intelligible. Now we have learned that for an understanding, not only elements, but their interrelations as well, are required.”
BREATHE LA’s environmental education program, O24u, helps kids understand the part they play in relating to their environment and the responsibility they have as individuals who are part of the whole system.
3. The critical interrelations of the public health pyramid are: Host, Agent, and Environment. BREATHE LA’s work inherently links these factors.
For example, our asthma awareness and education program, Lung Power, focuses on children (host) with asthma (agent) in areas with poor air quality (environment/asthma trigger).
4. Prevention is key to environmental public health. It is critical to assess environmental conditions that may lead to public health problems and determine environmental issues that need to be addressed, keeping in mind how a solution will affect other parts of the system.
In addition to broader air quality issues, BREATHE LA also focuses on preventable individual behavior such as smoking. Our 4-U-N-I Teens Helping Teens Quit Smoking program is an important prevention measure for tobacco control.
5. Understanding the entire disease process is critical, including components such as indirect transmission, vector spread, host susceptibility, resistance, and specific factors of resistance.
Having a clear picture of all these processes helps BREATHE LA staff effectively address lung health issues. In our work with COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease) patients, it is critical that we consider all of these elements of lung disease to effectively serve people who have an advanced chronic condition.
“The most important thing to remember,” says BREATHE LA CEO Enrique Chiock, “is that we are all responsible for our actions that affect our own health as well as the health of our neighbors. It’s in everyone’s best health interest--including your own---to take environmental issues seriously and understand how environmentally responsible actions impact personal human health.”
*Special thanks to South Central Public Health Partnership and instructors Capt. Charles S. Otto, III, R.S., Innovation Team Leader with CDC’s Environmental Health Services Branch and Sharunda D. Buchanan, Ph.D.Director, Division of Emergency and Environmental Health Services.