Environment
Section Newsletter
Winter 2011
TWENTY-FIRST Annual APHA Public Health Materials Contest
The APHA Public Health Education
and Health Promotion Section is soliciting your best health education, promotion
and communication materials for the 21st annual competition. The
contest provides a forum to showcase public health materials during the APHA
Annual Meeting and recognizes professionals for their hard work.
All winners will be selected by
panels of expert judges prior to the 139th APHA Annual Meeting in Washington,
D.C. A session will be held at the Annual Meeting to recognize winners, during
which one representative from the top materials selected in each category will
give a presentation about the winning material.
Entries will be accepted in three categories; printed materials,
electronic materials, and other materials. Entries for the contest are due by
March 25, 2011. Please contact Stephanie Parsons at sparsons@jhsph.edu for additional contest entry information.
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The APHA Food and Environment Working Group Wants YOU
The APHA Food and Environment Working Group
is gearing up for an exciting year of events, Annual Meeting session planning,
and advocacy. The Working Group is a multi-disciplinary collaboration across sections
of APHA.
Colleagues work together to protect public health by promoting and cultivating
a safe, healthy, just and sustainable food system.
Are you looking for leadership experience?
Several of our sub-committees still need leaders. It’s a great opportunity to
network with colleagues and develop your leadership skills!
Contact Rebecca Klein about leadership
opportunities, to join a committee(s), or to learn more about the Working Group,
at rklein@jhsph.edu.
Long-term
Planning:
Serves as an advisory committee for the Working Group,
guides the group's vision. Facilitates fundraising and outreach efforts for the
group.
Policy:
Works on food and farm policy issues, helping to educate the public health
community about the connections between agriculture/food policy and health.
Sustainable water/food use:
Works to "green" food and water served at APHA events; provides
information to members about the importance of sustainable food and water
D.C.-Area Food System tour:
Each year the Saturday before the Annual Meeting, we host a tour of innovative
food system projects, this is a well-attended and popular event.
Networking:
Plans our Working Group's main event at the APHA Annual Meeting. It is lots
of fun and the primary opportunity for meeting attendees interested in food
systems to network with each other and for our group to build its membership
and share our accomplishments.
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Registration Now Open for APHA Midyear Meeting
"Implementing Health Reform: A Public Health
Approach"
Registration
is now open for APHA’s Midyear Meeting: Implementing
Health Reform — A Public Health Approach. Join public health
colleagues and partners in Chicago,
June 23-25, to better understand the health reform law and its implications
from a public health perspective. Gain the tools needed for implementing the
provisions of the Affordable Care Act and for improving health outcomes in
communities across the country. The early-bird registration deadline is April
15. To register or for more information, visit http://www.apha.org/midyear.
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Membership Committee
Welcome to our new members!
You have joined a 1,000-person strong group of environmental health
professionals dedicated to working with other sections in APHA to assure that
our communities are safe and healthy places to live and work. Join with us in
our efforts to develop an exciting scientific program for the upcoming Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C., and celebrate our 100th anniversary as a Section, as well as impact policies and programs on climate change, the built
environment, environmental justice, food and the environment and other issues.
Contact Membership Committee Chair Barbara Glenn (glenn.barbara1@gmail.com) to find out opportunities to meet us and about
activities you may like to be involved in.
To get the latest Environment and Public Health News, please join the Weekly Update email list by sending a blank email to: environment_section_apha-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
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EPA Seeks Applications for Environmental Community Grants
EPA is making approximately $2
million available
in 2011 to reduce pollution at the local level through the Community
Action
for a Renewed Environment (CARE) program. CARE is a community-based
program
that works with county and local governments, tribes, non-profit
organizations
and universities to help the public understand and reduce toxic risks
from
numerous sources. Since 2005, CARE has reached 81 communities in
several states and territories. A recent evaluation by the National
Association
of Public Administration recognized the CARE program as a solid,
tested framework for engaging communities and other stakeholders.
EPA will award CARE cooperative agreements in two levels. Level I awards
range from $75,000 to $100,000 each and will help establish
community-based
partnerships to develop local environmental priorities. Level II
awards range from $150,000 to $300,000 each and will support communities
that have established broad-based partnerships, have identified the
priority
toxic risks in the community, and are prepared to measure results,
implement
risk-reduction activities and become self-sustaining.
Please note that due to appropriation
law concerns, until Congress provides separate authorization, EPA can
only
award CARE Level II cooperative agreements to applicants that have
already
received CARE Level I cooperative agreements.
Applications for the CARE assistance agreements are due by March 22,
2011,
4 p.m. EST. EPA will conduct a Webcast to answer questions from
prospective applicants about the application process on March 2 from 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.
For more information about the CARE assistance agreements visit: http://www.epa.gov/care/
For the 2011 CARE Request for
Proposals
(RFP)
visit:
http://www.grants.gov/search/search.do;jsessionid=vBDhNvSFC1tJvGM27mnGqt91tD9ZcjJP2TL2C6ZQ6P95LrQWdDHQ!1499805812?oppId=64453&mode=VIEW
News release:
http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/a7b2ee8e45551c138525735900404444/55003c3dbc151cd98525781e0064080f!OpenDocument
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EHS
Mission and Staff of
Environmental Health Sciences
|
www.EnvironmentalHealthNews.org is published
daily by Environmental Health Sciences, a foundation-funded journalism
organization founded in 2002.
Our daily
e-letter, Above The Fold, is
available free.
The mission of
Environmental Health News is to advance the public’s understanding of
environmental health issues by publishing its own journalism and providing
access to worldwide news about a variety of subjects related to the health of
humans, wildlife and ecosystems.
|
|
|
Toward that
end, journalists write and publish articles on the EHN site. These stories
are provided to newspapers and other media through EHN's news
service. These articles meet high journalistic standards of non-advocacy, and
the content is under the control of the editor in chief. EHN also offers
timely, daily access to the hundreds of other articles on environmental health
topics that are published each day in the world press, and its searchable
archives date back to 2002. EHN does not accept funding from interest groups.
Our syndication services are
available for free and are used by more than 300 other websites around the world.
To subscribe: http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/subscribe.html
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Communications Committee
APHA
Environment Section Mid Year Meeting
Save the Date!
APHA Environment Section Mid Year Meeting will
be held on May 20 at the APHA Headquarters in Washington, D.C.
Get the Weekly Updates
Get the latest information on the Environment Section, job and funding opportunities. Send a blank e-mail to:
environment_section_apha-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
facebook
Join the Environment Section on facebook : http://www.facebook.com/#%21/group.php?gid=33597204816
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Awards Committee
Call for Awards Nominations
Nominations for Section awards are now open -- in particular, the Section's Distinguished Service Award and the presenter for the annual Homer N. Calver Lecture.
The Distinguished Service Award is presented to someone who has exhibited outstanding service to the Section, the field of environmental health and APHA. There are many deserving members of our organization who are eligible, so please submit their names accompanied by a short letter of support.
The Calver Lecture is presented annually by someone from the area where the APHA Annual Meeting is held (this year: Washington, D.C.). The presenter's primary message often is geared toward late-breaking and new innovation in the field of environmental health. Topics also can include a top governmental leader (CDC, etc.), political figure or someone giving an historical perspective on where the environmental heath field has been, and where it is going today.
Our Section continues to have a distinguished list of past award winners.
Please forward nominations to Awards Committee Chair Leon Vinci at lfv6@aol.com.
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In Loving Memory of Mrs. Hazel M. Johnson
In Loving Memory
of Mrs. Hazel M. Johnson,
the Mother of
Environmental Justice (1935-2011)
The environmental justice community is
mourning the death of Mrs. Hazel M. Johnson who passed away of congestive heart
failure at the age of 75 on Wednesday, Jan. 12, 2011. Advocate, community organizer, founder
and most importantly, the Mother of Environmental Justice, are just a few titles that
embody Mrs. Johnson’s memory. Mrs.
Johnson pushed the envelope to protect her community, wasn’t blinded by greed
or politics, and was relentlessly committed to empowerment of and justice for
communities disproportionately exposure to environmental hazards.
She embraced the concept of
“environmental justice” as it deeply resonated with her dedication to provide
environmental protection to all
people regardless of their race/ethnicity/origin, color, sexual orientation or
income. After her husband died from lung
cancer in 1969, Mrs. Johnson began what became her lifetime commitment to
advocating for environmental justice. In
the early 1970s she began by questioning the link between disease, particularly
cancer prevalence, and environmental exposures in her community of Calumet
in the Chicago area. Her
prodding revealed that her very own community or "the toxic doughnut” - a community encircled by toxins, as Mrs.
Johnson referred to it - had once been home to an industrial sludge
dump in the mid 1800s, was currently surrounded by functional industrial
factories, and was among the nation's most polluted areas. The land was never tested for accumulated
toxins or cleared as a safe residential area.
With this information she single handedly began her fight with the Chicago
Housing Authority to demand public disclosure of the air, water and land
quality in her community.
In 1979 she founded People for
Community Recovery (PCR), one of the oldest African-American community-based
environmental organizations in the Midwest with a mission to “enhance the
quality of life of residents living in communities affected by pollution”. Throughout the 1980s she focused on educating
herself, her community and her organization on environmental diseases while
simultaneously documenting illness occurrence linked to environmental exposures
in her community. She has been a key player in
demanding closures of many local industrial factories, the clean up of PCBs in
the soil in various areas of Chicago and was instrumental in persuading city health officials to
test what was later determined to be a cyanide-contaminated drinking water in a
South Side Chicago neighborhood.
PCR has conducted trainings around green jobs and
environmental hazards (e.g. “Resident Education About Lead Project). This organization was awarded the
Presidents Environmental and Conservation Challenge Award in 1992 (under former
President George Bush, Sr.). Her tireless advocacy work throughout Chicago
gained her national notoriety in 1994, where she joined a group of activists in
urging President Bill Clinton to sign the Environmental Justice order 12898,
holding the federal government accountable for investigating the impact of
pollution on low income, minority urban communities. Most recently, PCR worked together with
Northwestern University to produce a film called, “Poison Promise of Altgeld
Gardens” that documents the lawsuits filed by residents against the Chicago
Housing Authority for PCB and PAH contamination in Altgeld Gardens in the
Southside of Chicago. She was also named one of 12 “sheroes” of Environmental
Justice at the Second National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit
in 2002.
Mrs. Johnson’s legacy reminds each of us that it takes only
one voice and pure dedication to make change in our communities. She demonstrated that through education, perseverance
and tenacity, change is possible and attainable beyond our local
communities. She has taught us that constant
vigilance and activism keep policy makers accountable to the people regarding
environmental issues. And it is in
her memory that we will continue to forge new ground, despite all odds, to expand
the environmental justice movement. The
environmental justice movement will greatly miss Mrs. Hazel’s persistence, but
will fight to progress in her memory.
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