Title: Announcements
Author:
Section/SPIG: Environment
Issue Date:
Call for 2004 Environment Section Award Nominations
Nominations for Section Awards are now open. In particular, the two Awards include the Section's Distinguished Service Award (DSA) and the presenter for the annual Homer N. Calver Lecture. The DSA is presented to the person who has exhibited outstanding service to the Section, to the field of Environment Health and to APHA. Many deserving members of our organization are eligible, so please submit their names accompanied by a short letter of support. The annual Calver Lecture is presented by a distinguished individual from the area in which the APHA Annual Meeting is held (2004: Washington, D.C.). The presenter’s primary message focuses on late breaking innovations in environment and public health. Our Section continues to have a distinguished list of past award winners. Please forward nominations to Nominations Chair Allen Dearry and Awards Chair Leon Vinci, at the following e-mail addresses: <Dearry@Niehs.Nih.Gov> and <lfv6@aol.com>.
HEI's Winter 2004 Research Agenda available
The Health Effects Institute/HEI, <http://www.healtheffects.org>, is an independent, nonprofit corporation chartered in 1980 to provide high-quality, impartial, and relevant science on the health effects of pollutants from motor vehicles and from other sources in the environment. Supported jointly by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and industry, HEI has funded over 230 studies and published over 140 Research Reports, and several Special Reports, providing important research findings on the health effects of a variety of pollutants, including carbon monoxide, several air toxics (e.g., benzene, 7,3-butadiene, aldehydes), nitrogen oxides, diesel exhaust, ozone, and particulate air pollution.
The Health Effects Institute’s request for applications (RFA) to conduct studies is designed to:
evaluate the health effects of regulatory or other actions taken at the local, regional or national level to improve air quality, and promote the development of analytic methods required for, and specifically suited to, conducting such evaluations.
The Winter 2004 Research Agenda contains three Requests for Applications:
RFA 04-1: Measuring the Health Impacts of Actions Taken to Improve Air Quality;
RFA 04-2: Walter A. Rosenblith New Investigator Award; and
RFPA 04-3: Health Effects of Air Pollution.
RFA 04-1 is the next major step in HEI’s Accountability initiative and seeks proposals to pursue the key research needs identified in the recent HEI Communication 11, Assessing the Health Impact of Air Quality Regulations: Concepts and Methods for Accountability Research. Please visit <http://www.healtheffects.org/RFA/RFA2004.htm> to find more information on the Research Agenda and to download the 2004 RFA booklet and application forms.
Please see the HEI's recently published Monograph: Assessing Health Impact of Air Quality Regulations: Concepts and Methods for Accountability Research. Visit <http://www.healtheffects.org/accountability.htm>.
Trust for America’s Health
"President, Congress Urged to Make Health Funding a Priority"
More than 370 groups advocate for more discretionary spending for public health
Press release: <http://healthyamericans.org/newsroom/releases/release012904a.pdf>.
Reports <http://healthyamericans.org/reports/tfah/>
-Poll Report on America's Top Health Concerns
-Ready or Not? Protecting the Public's Health in the Age of Bioterrorism
-Improving Cancer Tracking Today Saves Lives Tomorrow: Do States Make the Grade?
-Animal-Borne Epidemics Out of Control
-Public Health Laboratories: Unprepared and Overwhelmed
-SARS and Its Implications for U.S. Public Health Policy – "We've Been Lucky"
-Birth Defects Tracking and Prevention: Too Many States Are Not Making the Grade
Disclosure in Regulatory Science - From K. Armenti, OH Section Newsletter Editor
A message from David Michaels*, PhD, MPH: In a recent issue of Science magazine, <http://www.sciencemag.org/>, published Dec. 19, 2003, Wendy Wagner and I identify a serious gap related to the integrity of regulatory science. We argue that while the leading biomedical journals won't publish a study unless the authors certify that the research was done under a contract which permitted them the unfettered right to publish, federal regulatory agencies, charged with protecting the public's health and environment, have no similar (or any) protections against conflict-of-interest in research.
*Research Professor
Department of Environmental and Occupational Health
The George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services
2100 M St. NW, Suite 203
Washington DC, 20052