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PARTNERSHIP EVENTS

Partnership call: Advancing Risk Assessment: Progress and Ongoing Obstacles
Thur, May 24


Conference: Healthy Environments Across Generations
New York Academy of Medicine
June 7-8, 2012
 

4/26/12: MP3 recording available: CHE Cafe call: Designing Healthy Communities: a conversation with Richard Jackson, MD, MPH


4/17/12: MP3 recording available: Nanotechnology: A Science and Policy Update 


3/12/12: MP3 recording available: Phthalates and Proposed REACH Regulations


2/14/12: MP3 recording available: Health Effects of Indoor Air Contaminants
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CHE Partners on why they value our work

CHE WORKING GROUP EVENTS


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Taking Stock and Looking Forward
18 January 2006

Steve Heilig, MPH, Director of Public Health and Education, Collaborative on Health and the Environment and San Francisco Medical Society 

The advent of a new year is often a time for taking stock of things.  On a global level, whether from a political, environmental, or other perspective, that's an increasingly daunting prospect.  2005 was a year of disasters and challenges unprecedented in modern times.  Sticking to CHE's focus on environmental health, and particularly toxins, it becomes only slightly less so.  Science marches on but policy, prevention, and practice too often lags far behind.  Where, beyond in our personal lives, to look for a better, more hopeful view?

With that question in mind, I asked CHE's esteemed chairman, Dr. Philip Lee, if he might ruminate a bit on the state of environmental health at the start of this year.  True to form, he bypassed philosophical musings and cut to a practical, central concern - resources.  "The decisions by Congress to make major cuts in health-related programs over the past five years does not bode well for federally-funded environmental health programs, whether in research, education, or regulation.  This will not make anything easier.  But the more time we spend with those who know the science and care about the issues, the more inspiring they seem.  At a minimum maybe CHE is one vehicle that helps such people persevere against the odds."  Then I logged on to founding CHE Partner, Dr. Pete Myers’ amazing news site, www.environmentalhealthnews.org and clicked on the “good news” summary at the bottom for some reinforcement – and found some.  And yes, CHE continues to grow, our National Partnership calls, working groups, meetings, and other work continue to draw more eager participants, and yes, the CHE Partners I have been fortunate to meet are inspiring people.

Moving one's office or home sometimes forces an inventory of past work, successful or otherwise.  In my own current case - the sale of the San Francisco Medical Society's headquarters, where I have long worked part-time, this involves filtering out fifteen years of accumulated paper.  One item that surfaced was a battered notebook containing hand-scribbled notes from one of CHE's first 'meetings' - actually, a walk I took with Michael Lerner around Commonweal's beautiful grounds in 2001, talking about what a new environmental health network could do and what it might look like.
   
Much of the scribbling from that walk is illegible, but the germ of CHE is there.  Michael had obviously thought long and hard about what such a network might do; I just tried to fill in some details.  We agreed that many concerned scientists and health professionals, patients, and advocates might benefit from more collaboration; that a science-based, inclusive network could be a fertile place for furthering research, education, and other action; and that it would be a big job, requiring some very good people to draw others in.  But we agreed to try it, for at least five years to start, and Michael went off to find funding while I set about drafting a consensus statement (which went through fifteen revisions before public debut).  Other core founding CHE Partners pitched right in and most are still active in CHE.  Having Phil Lee, one of public health's living legends, enthusiastically agree to be CHE's Chair was a major coup.  The almost-daily scientific guidance of some of our most devoted scientific leaders has been key to keeping us grounded in reality.  We have added a lean and excellent staff as the work grows.  And it does grow - peruse our packed new website, www.healthandenvironment.org, of which we are quite proud - for evidence of that.  Managing growth in a sustainable manner, to borrow some environmental buzzwords, has been a bigger challenge to CHE than seeking growth itself.  CHE remains very much a work in progress.
   
On a closing note, the building the 138-year-old San Francisco Medical Society is leaving was the site of CHE's inaugural conference in 2002.  It's a wonderful old mansion we vacate with mixed feelings, but after all, it's just a house.  Many worthwhile health-related projects and organizations were hatched in that building though, some enduring and some not.  But in my own taking stock, I am fairly certain that CHE will be shown to be one of the very best and most important legacies of that old house.

On behalf of CHE, best wishes for a rewarding and healthy new year.

Steve Heilig, MPH
Director of Public Health and Education
Collaborative on Health and the Environment
San Francisco Medical Society

 

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