Environment
Section Newsletter
Fall 2006

I. Note from Environment Section Communications Chair/e-News Editors

Farewell, and Timelines for e-newsletters in 2007 (winter, spring, fall):

Please send ideas for contributions, for the subsections below or other ones we are happy to create, by the appropriate deadlines for upcoming issues in 2007 of the APHA Environment Section e-newsletter to Andrea.Wismann@UCHSC.edu for Andrea Wismann.

Andrea, our Secretary-elect 2006, becomes secretary and communications chair for 2007-08 at the end of the 2006 Annual Meeting in Boston. Derek Shendell’s tenure as secretary-elect then secretary and communications chair (2003-06 overall) ends in November.  He has been helping and will continue to help Andrea transition.

The submission deadlines will be publicized through the APHA monthly e-newsletters for the two months prior to deadline.  A final set of notices is then sent to the Section’s primary members by APHA about 2-3 weeks in advance, and then again one week in advance of the deadline at our request.

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II. APHA Environment Section’s Membership Committee Report: Highlights of the Membership Reading this e-Newsletter

The data from spring/summer 2006 (176 unique visits, 235 views, for an average of three and a half minutes each), demonstrated an increase in number of views from the fall 2005 and winter 2006 issues, and a slight increase in visits (incidence of reading e-newsletter) among primary section members. Please continue to improve this communication mode, and read it!

We welcome your participation to make these things happen.

Please contact us.  We look forward to having you join us:

Dorothy Stephens, Dorothy.Stephens@CMS.hhs.gov, and

Susan Lynn Stone, Stone.Susan@epamail.epa.gov

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III. A. APHA Environment Section “Student Corner”

Students can be the driving catalyst in public health progress, which is why our involvement in the APHA Environment Section is so important. As co-liaisons to this section, we are very excited to be working with such a dedicated group of public health professionals.

Who are we?

Rebecca Tave Gluskin is a prospective MSc candidate in Environmental Health at New York University. Her research is in air pollution, with interests branching into policy (monitoring/enforcement).

Taylor Anderson is working toward an MPH in health education and health promotion at Portland State University, and plans to do PhD work in epidemiology with the ultimate goal of research and teaching. She has broad range of interests in public health; environmental health is a major one.

We hope everyone had a nice summer and are looking forward to the 2006-2007 school year. We are excited to start the season off with an Environment Section Student Scholarship for the APHA Annual Meeting in Boston this November. Hopefully you recieved an e-mail with the instructions for application and applied!

Are you living in the Boston area and attending the APHA Annual Meeting? If so, we are looking for students who would like to host out-of-town students for the meeting.  This is a great way to support your peers and help cut down on the high cost of travel.

At the meeting, we want to provide a chance for us all to meet. We are open to suggestions on a venue in Boston where we could easily gather. Further information on this will be made at a later date.

I know what you did last summer... actually, we don't. Did you conduct research, work at an internship, and/or take classes?  Tell us what you did this summer, and we will post it on The Student Web Lounge site: (http://depts.washington.edu/aphaenv/students.htm).

So, please check out the Student Web Lounge and let us know if there is anything else you want to add.  We hope to make this a beneficial resource for the APHA Environmental Section student community.  Have a great year!

Looking forward to hearing from you!

Rebecca Tave Gluskin                
Co-Liaison Environmental Section APHA       
Prospective MSc. Environmental Health            
New York University                                          
Rtg230@nyu.edu       
                                          
Taylor Anderson
Co-Liaison Environmental Section APHA
Prospective MPH Health Education/Health Promotion
Portland State University
taylor_brooke@msn.com

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III. B. Solicitation for Future “Student Corner” contributions

We have initiated the “Student Corner” portion of our seasonal newsletter for use by and the benefit of our student members.  We encourage student members to send text by the appropriate deadlines for upcoming issues of the APHA Environment Section e-newsletter to Andrea.Wismann@uchsc.edu.

We encourage short update reports from our section’s Student Involvement Committee and news pertaining APHA’s Student Assembly of interest to our section membership. 

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IV. A. APHA 2006 Annual Meeting, Boston, Nov. 5-8, 2006

Please go to http://www.apha.org/meetings for more information and specific deadlines by Section; each edition of the American Journal of Public Health (monthly) and of The Nation’s Health newspaper (monthly) now have started to contain overall program information, registration forms, etc.

[EDITOR NOTE: Aditi Vaidya is our senior program planner for 2006, joined by our new junior program planner, August Martin. August will become Sr. Program Planner in 2007. Thank you, both of you, for your hard work!]

Please see the attached table for final 2006 ENV Section Program in Boston, (“2006 APHA Env Program 083106.xls”).

2006 Environment Section Program Planners,

Aditi Vaidya (aditi_v1@yahoo.com) and August Martin (augustmartinjr@yahoo.com).

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IV. B. Late Breaker: Federal Government Officials to Moderate/Speak at an APHA Environment Section Session of the 2006 Annual Meeting

APHA session 3400.0, "Protecting Children's Environmental Health: Education and Social Justice" (Nov. 6, 2006, 4:45 p.m.). 

Environmental health risks to children in out-of-home settings such as child care centers and schools continues to be inadequately addressed in our society, and their rights to a healthful 'workplace' where they spend more than 30 hours per week are lacking. A panel at the 2004 APHA Annual Meeting (Built Environment Institute session) identified gaps among federal agencies and programs, and a subsequent paper "Who's In Charge of Children's Environmental Health at School?" (2006, Healthy Schools Network) further reinforced the gaps with a series of recommendations for advocates, researchers, agencies (federal and state), and others. To date there is no significant forward motion to close the gaps. This panel of leading experts will discuss potential strategies and initiatives that could be undertaken to impact these public health problems and to improve the health of children overall. Panelists are Dr. Ruth Etzel, co-editor of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Green Book (1^st and 2^nd editions), Dr. Howard Frumkin, Director, CDC/NCEH, J. Cox-Gasner/CDC-NIOSH, and Dr. B. Gitterman, Co-Director, Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Unit at George Washington University.  

This session’s learning objectives are:
1.) Recognize gaps in environmental health research and services for children in out of home settings;
2.) Understand multi-agency perspectives on how to address these gaps;
3)discuss and create potential strategies and potential initiatives for increasing interagency dialog on coordinated and effective actions.

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IV. C. Request for Professional Input during APHA 2006 Environment Section

Poster Session (Nov. 6, 2006, #3261.0 Board 4):

APHA Role in Developing Model Codes for Regulating the Built Environment

Environment Section members, your input is needed on the continuation, future extent and nature of APHA's representation on several national committees responsible for model building codes and safety standards that, when adopted, strongly influence the built environment.  The background is provided below in relation to a poster scheduled for Monday, Nov. 6, on Board 4 at the Annual Meeting.  Having this only presented as a poster is not ideal and will not be effective unless interested APHA members use the opportunity to come to the poster to discuss, with Jake Pauls, how APHA should proceed.  Alternatively, members unable to come to the poster should contact Jake Pauls before, during or shortly after the Boston meeting.

Changes being discussed within the two major organizations responsible for national building model codes and standards in the several months before and after the APHA Annual Meeting are unprecedented in relation to safety of larger buildings.  Many large national organizations are involved in the deliberations and, to an extent not seen before, the media are covering issues such as high-rise building design, regulation and safety among other topics.  A prime example is the PBS NOVA television broadcast on Sept.5, "Building on Ground Zero."  Jake Pauls served as a technical resource and on-screen participant for NOVA on this broadcast as well as for NOVA's prior coverage of the World Trade Center disaster in an Emmy Award winning program in 2002.  (See www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/wtc.) For too long, the built environment has been influenced much more by engineering consultants than by public health experts.  Similarly, public health professionals are too little involved in the political process in which the model codes are adopted by state and local jurisdictions, reducing the chance that model codes are enforced and actually impact the built environment.  Please contribute your ideas for changing this by using the opportunity provided by the poster session described below.

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