Interview with CHE Partner, Mark Mitchell, MD, MPH

President, Connecticut Coalition for Environmental Justice

Steve Heilig: Tell us your own background and how you came to do the work you do.

I am an African American public health physician specializing in preventive medicine. I spent 6 years as deputy director of the health department of Kansas City, MO, and then served as the director at the Hartford Health Department in Connecticut. Initially drawn to the public health field because of the discriminatory practices I experienced as a youth, I chose preventive medicine as my specialty because it was supposed to bring social justice to medicine.

As a newcomer to public health, I strongly believed that its role was providing health resources to the people needing it most. The day-to-day reality however, proved that this was not often the case, as I observed that public health services were mainly provided to those who demanded them.

Over time, I realized that most of the diseases on the increase were strongly tied to the environment. However, there was strong political pressure for public officials to not regulate businesses and industries that were threats to public health. It became difficult, if not impossible, to be successful at promoting good public environmental health policies based solely on science. What is needed is public knowledge, support and pressure to advocate for change; otherwise, public policy would continue to lag 10 to 20 years behind environmental health science.

After leaving the health department in Hartford, I started Mitchell Health Consultants to provide technical assistance to local health departments and community groups to disseminate the necessary knowledge and provide the tools for those entities to advocate for policies that would protect the health of low-income communities and people of color.

It became apparent to me that there was a huge need for environmental justice, which is defined as the focus on the environmental health issues of urban communities, especially people of color and those with low incomes. There needed to be an organization that focused solely on this issue and could articulate the environmental justice aspects that cut across so many different types of organizations and missions in urban areas. The CT Coalition for Environmental Justice (CCEJ) was created in 1998 to fill the need I perceived, and has environmental health and justice as its primary focus.
 

2.  What are the primary mission and work of your organization?

The mission of CCEJ is to address environmental health issues, primarily in the 89 small cities in Connecticut. The organization provides:
(1) Grass roots organizing and leadership development in low-income urban communities, primarily in Connecticut; (2) Tools that allow people to respond to issues in their environment; for example, information on asthma, air pollution, diesel emissions; (3) Promotion of policy change to reduce air pollution on the local and state level; (4) Training on a monthly basis to grassroots membership; (5) Planning sessions to develop advocacy strategies.

CCEJ has accomplished much in its seven-year existence. For example:

• Successfully lobbied the Connecticut General Assembly for the creation of a statewide asthma data collection system.
• Persuaded the City of Hartford to declare an ‘asthma emergency’ in the city and fund work to address the high rates of asthma.
• Instrumental in positioning Hartford, New Haven and Bridgeport school districts to be awarded $1.5 million in funding for clean school bus emissions.
• Provided data that led to the enactment of a three-minute idling law for diesel school buses in Connecticut.
• Instrumental in persuading the city of Hartford schools system to produce an Integrated Pest Management Plan for district schools.
• Operates a successful Asthma Speakers’ Bureau to educate families in Hartford on asthma’s causes and triggers related environmental health issues.
• In collaboration with the CT Fund for the Environment, Environment Northeast and Clean water Action, worked to enact a state law in 2005 requiring DEP to develop a statewide strategy to reduce diesel emissions from school uses, transit buses and construction equipment.
  

3.  What are the most striking recent developments in your work arena?

1. About every 6 months on average, in Hartford, there is a proposal for a new waste facility or expansion of one of the eight existing regional facilities which burn trash and sewage sludge from up to 70 other towns. This contributes to high rates of asthma and other respiratory-related diseases in the city.
   
   
2. There is, at long last, some recognition at the state legislative level that the policies that allow or promote toxins concentration in urban areas need to be changed.
   
   
3. There is an accompanying realization that environmental health hazards affect all residents of urban areas, and that urban environmental toxins affect people who live far from those cities.
   

4.  What lessons have you learned in pursuing your goals?

1. Current policies do not promote the replacement of old polluting technology with cleaner technologies; rather, they only allow for addition of cleaner technologies for any newly built facility or expansion.
   
   
2. People are uncomfortable talking about differential concentrations of environmental hazards in communities of color.
   
   
3. Affected communities can become effective in changing government and industry’s policies and practices with science-based knowledge, community organizing and intensive skill-building.
   

5.  What are the biggest needs in environmental health/obstacle to your goals?

The biggest need is to reduce toxic exposure and reduce the toxicity of substances in use that pollute our environment. The biggest obstacle to this is proving the causal relationship that links hazards to human diseases and distress. Current health risk assessment methodologies are designed with a bias of determining that there is no risk. One method of proving causality that seems to hold promise is the use of toxicogenomics. 


6.  How is CHE useful to you and how could it be more so?

CHE has been very helpful in bringing the latest science to activist representatives. Those people can then take the information back to their groups to be used in their advocacy efforts. It would be additionally valuable if CHE could promote and advocate for using the latest science to technical advisors who can translate the scientific jargon into language that can be more grassroots-friendly (ala Wilma Subra in Louisiana). These grassroots groups can then advocate for the use of the new science in policy development in their locales.


7.  What’s new with your organization?

This year, CCEJ is expanding its environmental justice affiliates to Fairfield County in CT, creating the Fairfield County Environmental Justice Network that will be based in Bridgeport. CCEJ will be providing technical assistance through asthma education and organize the community to address diesel emission issues.

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Posted: 28 March 2006