"Climate Change: Our Health in the Balance"
From APHA
The health effects of climate change will take center stage during National Public Health Week, April 7-13, 2008. As part of the weeklong observance, themed "Climate Change: Our Health in the Balance," APHA will lead the charge in helping people, communities and families recognize that adapting to climate change and mitigating its impact is critical not just for the health of our planet, but for the health of the people in our nation and around the world.
Changes in our climate are causing more severe weather events. Extreme weather conditions such as heat waves, high winds, snowstorms, floods and hurricanes have the potential to dramatically affect the health and safety of both individuals and our communities. Changing ecosystems allow for emerging or re-emerging infectious diseases such as dengue or malaria, which are changing the spectrum of disease risks affecting populations. In poorer parts of the world, drought and floods often force people to move away from lands no longer producing enough food, often resulting in hunger and malnutrition. Moreover, contaminated drinking water can result in outbreaks of diarrheal diseases, leading to dehydration or death.
Few Americans will ever see the melting Greenland ice cap up close, or interact with an arctic polar bear facing extinction as its habitat melts. But local public health professionals around the country increasingly will be dealing with the impacts of climate change on the ground, every day. Join APHA as we work to create a healthier planet. Visit the official National Public Health Week Web site at www.nphw.org to check out the climate change blog and brochure, sign up to be a National Public health Week partner, or add your week's event to the national calendar. For more information about National Public Health Week, contact kaitlin.sheedy@apha.org.
From the Environment Section
John Balbus
This year’s APHA Annual Meeting featured an inspiring level of interest and attention given to the connections between climate change and our health. Building on this momentum, APHA and its partners across the nation, including state and local health departments, have dedicated National Public Health Week — April 7–13, 2008 — to helping Americans make the connection between climate change and public health. The official title is "Climate Change: Our Health in the Balance."
In the months leading up to National Public Health Week, APHA will work with public health experts and policy-makers to develop a list of key recommendations for planning for and managing the health impacts of climate change. APHA will also highlight the innovative ways that individuals, families and communities around the country are addressing climate change, and the ways that policy-makers are moving forward with proposals that support healthy communities and environments.
Section members are encouraged to organize events in their own communities and organizations to help deliver the message nationwide that our health as a species is truly in the balance, and that the necessary urgent changes in our energy consumption patterns can deliver human health benefits at the same time they help avert serious and irreversible damage to the planet’s fragile ecosystems.
Visit www.nphw.org for more information, or sign up as a partner at www.nphw.org/nphw08/partners.cfm?fuseaction=apply. Be sure to check out the blog at www.nphw.blogspot.com/. Planning a National Public Health Week event? Submit it to the calendar at www.nphw.org/nphw08/calendar.cfm?fuseaction=submit.
By making climate change the theme for 2008, the public health community can ignite a major shift in how our society addresses this unprecedented challenge.