Interview with CHE Partner, Leyla Erk McCurdy, MPhil

Senior Director, Health & Environment, National Environmental Education & Training Foundation

Steve Heilig: What first brought you into the environmental health movement?

I thought long and hard about this question. Was there a moment of awakening in my life when I made a deliberate decision to join the “environmental health movement”? I realized that the answer is no. This is who I am and this is how I have always lived my life.

Having grown up in a country with an abundance of natural beauty and a rich historical heritage, surrounded by people who put others’ well-being in front their own self-interests, where eating healthy was a way of life and wasting resources was not acceptable, I became who I am without even realizing that I was joining a “movement.”  

Thus, most of my professional career has centered around health and the environment, focusing specifically on environmental health at the American Lung Association from 1989-2001, and at the National Environmental Education & Training Foundation (NEETF) since 2001.    
 

What is the primary goal/mission of your organization/project?

The mission of NEETF is to advance environmental literacy and the goal of the Health & Environment Program is to improve public health by advancing environmental health literacy. Our Health Care Provider Initiative strives to integrate environmental health into health professionals’ education and practice with a special focus on protecting children and other populations disproportionately affected by environmental pollutants.
 

What have been the most significant obstacles and successes you have encountered and achieved in this work to date?

The most significant obstacle I have encountered is the lack of financial resources for the environmental health work. We have a large number of very talented and passionate people in this field and I am confident that we could turn things around if we had additional financial resources. However, even with limited resources, I believe the environmental health community has had a huge impact.

One of the successes we had at NEETF was working with a wide range of stakeholders to create the Position Statement: Health Professionals and Environmental Health Education, which has been endorsed by 25 leading health care and public health organizations to date.

Recently we launched our Children’s Environmental Health Faculty Champions Initiative and held a train-the trainer workshop for 28 pediatric faculty members, cosponsored by the American Academy of Pediatrics, Ambulatory Pediatric Association, American Association of Colleges of Nursing, Association of Academic Health Centers, and National Association of Pediatric Nurse Practitioners.

This initiative is creating a network of children’s environmental health faculty champions at medical and nursing schools throughout the country, who are taking a leadership role in integrating children’s environmental health into their academic institutions in a sustainable fashion, training their colleagues, teaching courses, providing expertise and support in their institutions and surrounding communities, and serving as a model for how to integrate environmental health into health professional education. NEETF is providing ongoing technical and material support to the faculty champions, and providing tools for trainings of faculty and residents at their respective institutions. Later this summer, the train-the-trainer curricula will be made available to the broader healthcare and environmental health community through our website.

Another example of our success has been the development of Environmental Management of Pediatric Asthma: Guidelines for Health Care Providers, which has been very well received by the health care community and has gained official support of the Ambulatory Pediatric Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Association of Colleges of Nursing, Association of Faculties of Pediatric Nurse Practitioners and National Association of Pediatric Nurse Practitioners.

NEETF is committed to continue working with a broad range of partners to facilitate the integration of environmental health into health care and public health in a sustainable manner.


What is the number one change you would like to see for the future of environmental health?

More resources for environmental health programs.
 

What or who continues to inspire you in your work?

What inspires me most is the passion, humbleness and the collaborative spirit of people around the world who are dedicated to environmental health.  
 

Any comments/suggestions re CHE itself?

I am very appreciative of what CHE has done for our community! 

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Posted: 23 November 2006