Nominations for Healthy Schools Heros
Ellie Goldberg
Do you know someone whose sense of responsibility, inspirational leadership and exemplary persistence and courage protects children from school hazards and unhealthy school conditions?
I created the Healthy Kids Healthy Schools Hero Award as an annual opportunity to remember the March 18, 1937 New London Texas School Explosion (http://www.NLSE.org) and to study its lessons.
By nominating a Healthy Kids Healthy Schools Hero you can help make March 18 an annual day dedicated to bringing the lessons of the 1937 Texas school exposion to our nation's schools and celebrating the heroes whose leadership saves children's lives.
The Hero Award is part of the campaign to promote citizen awareness and responsible leadership for chemical security by eliminating explosives and other hazards in today's schools. The story of the 1937 Texas school explosion needs to be part of our national legacy because more than 71 years later, too many children attend schools where explosives and other hazardous materials in labs, closets and storerooms and other safety code violations are routinely ignored.
Lessons Of History. In 1937, over 300 children died but no one was held responsible because the Court of Inquiry concluded that "school officials were just average individuals, ignorant or indifferent to the need for precautionary measures, where they cannot, in their lack of knowledge, visualize a danger or a hazard." (Court of Inquiry, 1937.)
The disaster resulted in a law requiring that a warning odor be added to natural gas, thus saving millions of lives all over the world. However, other important recommendations of the 1937 Court of Inquiry have yet to be implemented in most 21st century schools: 1) schools need technically trained administrators for modern school systems; 2) schools need to do rigid inspections and more widespread public education about avoiding and managing hazards; and 3) schools need a comprehensive, rational safety code.
Make 2008 a time to update your school's values and technical skills for 21st century citizens. Help move safety from the margins of school activity to the core of school culture and curriculum in science education, vocational education, occupational health and safety, community service, comprehensive school health and injury prevention, school security, emergency preparedness, environmental education, civic education, school maintenance and operations.
Nominations were due to healthykids@rcn.com by Feb. 15, 2008. The Hero Awards will be distributed through major education, environment, health and safety organizations and networks in time for National Healthy Schools Day April 28, 2008 and related events and observances that promote child health and safety.
For more information on the lessons of the New London School Disaster and to help promote March 18 as National Healthy Schools Heroes Day contact Ellie Goldberg at healthykids@rcn.com.
For examples of school activities, references and resources see: Strengthening the School's Response to Explosives in the RESOURCES section online at www.healthy-kids.info.
Nominations: Calver Award & the Damu Smith Environmental Achievement Award
Every year at the APHA Annual Meeting, the Environment Section recognizes two outstanding individuals for the Calver Award & the Damu Smith Environmental Achievement Award. And what are the criteria for each of these?
The Calver Award is bestowed upon a nationally known public health professional who has contributed significantly in preserving and protecting the environment and the health of their communities. The award is named for Homer Calver, a World War I medic, public health official, and environmental journalist. Calver was executive director of APHA and editor of its journal, the American Journal of Public Health. He also established and edited the Environmental News Digest. As a health officer in Winston-Salem, N.C., Calver brought the city through a diphtheria epidemic and secured a modern ordinance protecting the milk and food supply. Intrigued by European health exhibits he saw on a trip in 1930, he used APHA to promote American exhibits combining accurate health information with showmanship. One such exhibit, "The Transparent Man," was visited at the 1939 New York World's Fair by 12 million people, a record for a health exhibit that has yet to be broken. The Calver Award was established in 1970, the year Calver died (and the year Earth Day was first observed).
The newer Damu Smith Environmental Achievement Award, first awarded in 2007, honors an individual who has performed outstanding social, environmental & economic justice work in the diverse but intersecting fields of environmental justice, biodiversity conservation, citizen advocacy, indigenous rights, human rights and environmental health. Damu Smith, an internationally known D.C. peace activist who advocated for a Martin Luther King Jr. holiday in the 1980s, fought chemical pollution on the Louisiana Gulf Coast in the 1990s and campaigned against the war in Iraq in the new century, worked to bridge communities and issues in order to make a positive difference in how we work together for a common good. One example of his good work was in 1999, when he, in a move that changed the face of the environmental movement, coordinated the largest environmental justice conference ever held, the historic National Emergency Gathering of Black Community Advocates for Environmental and Economic Justice. This gathering led to the formation of the National Black Environmental Justice Network, the first ever-national network of black environmental justice activists, of which Damu served as executive director.
Award nominations can be sent to Rebecca Head rebecca_head@monroemi.org; Leon Vinci lfv6@aol.com or Nsedu Obot Witherspoon nobot@cehn.org.