1. CHE Partnership Call Announcement - December 12
2. UCSF-CHE Environmental Reproductive Health Summit, January 28-30
3. CHE Co-sponsors Conference on Environment and Health in the European Union
4. Working and Regional Group Updates
5. Tools, Announcements and Resources for CHE Partners
6. CHE Science News Headlines
7. New CHE Partners
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Dear CHE Partners and Friends:
Needless to say, the political climate in our country has changed dramatically in the past week. In true CHE nonpartisan form I will resist any urges to comment on things political (tempting though that might be). Instead, here's a bit of insight into how "CHE Democracy" works:
Take a look at CHE's home page and you can note, in the "What's New" section, highlighted information including but not limited to CHE-generated resources, and, at the bottom, an "Opportunities for CHE Partners" link. Currently at the top is information on the planned closure of the EPA libraries, a valuable resource for researchers and others both within and outside of the EPA. On the "Opportunities" page you can find more announcements of further advocacy activities, conferences, funding sources, jobs, and so on.
How do we find such information? It comes from you, CHE Partners who wish to spread word about something important. If you do send something to us, our "CHE Core" group will review it promptly for possible posting. The criteria is somewhat subjective but based upon a firm grasp of and commitment to CHE's function. So please do submit news, resources, and so on to us (and please do not take it personally if our collective decision is not to post it). CHE is fundamentally about sharing information and this is one way we do that. And, we must confess, if you publish something about a CHE meeting or project itself, you’ll have a pretty good chance of having it posted on or linked to the CHE site as well (for example, see the unsolicited – honestly – writeups of our October national conference on the home page now). We’re only human.
A number of CHE Partners recently returned from Europe for some conferences and organizational meetings that may well result in an exciting extension of CHE activities there (see below for more information). Until then, we hope you will join us on one of our upcoming conference calls or meetings.
Steve Heilig, MPH
Director of Public Health and Education
Collaborative on Health and the Environment
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1. CHE Partnership Call Announcement - December 12
We hope you will join us for the next CHE National Partnership Call -- Rethinking Autism: Towards a Whole Body Paradigm -- scheduled for Tuesday, December 12 @ 9am Pacific / 12noon Eastern time.
Autism, first identified in the 1940s, was initially believed to be an entirely psychological problem; then later, a strongly genetic disorder. Now, driven by suggestive evidence that incidence is increasing and that some children are responding to biomedical treatment, a new paradigm of autism as a set of phenotypes involving environmental modulation or triggering of genetic vulnerability is emerging. Environmental contaminants may play a significant role in some of these hypothesized phenotypes, as do gastrointestinal disorders and other conditions. Harvard neuroscientist and CHE Partner, Martha Herbert, MD, Ph.D., will discuss the new paradigm with comments from CHE Partner, Lee Grossman, President of the Autism Society of America and the proud parent of an autistic child, and from founding CHE Partner, Michael Lerner, Ph.D., President of Commonweal. This call will be moderated by Elise Miller, M.Ed., Executive Director, Institute for Children's Environmental Health, and Coordinator of CHE's Learning and Developmental Disabilities Initiative Working Group.
Please RSVP to Julia Varshavsky at: Julia@HealthandEnvironment.org to receive call details. More information is available on the CHE website at: http://www.healthandenvironment.org/articles/partnership_calls/788.
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2. UCSF-CHE Environmental Reproductive Health Summit, January 28-30
Join fellow research, health care, community and advocacy leaders January 28-30, 2007 at University of California, San Francisco in a pioneering national conference that will explore the critical relevance of environmental health science to reproductive and developmental health. For more information visit: www.ucsf.edu/coe/prhesummit.html. Be sure to register soon for the best rate.
Preeminent researchers will review the impacts of environmental contaminants on female and male reproductive health (including fertility), with focus on: periconceptional/ fetal origins of developmental, pubertal and adult disorders; adult exposures; priority concern contaminants; and gene-environment interactions. Participant discussions and break-out groups will focus on: translation of research to clinical care and prevention-oriented public health policy; the nexus of reproductive advocacy and environmental health/justice; and critical research directions.
Co-chairs: Linda C. Giudice, MD, PhD, MSc, Chair, UCSF Dept of Ob, Gyn & Repro Sci, and Philip R. Lee, MD, CHE Founding Chair and UCSF Chancellor and Professor Emeritus; co-director (w. UCSF partners): Alison Carlson, CHE-Fertility Work Group.
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3. CHE Co-sponsors Conference on Environment and Health in the European Union
CHE scientists and staff participated in an international conference titled, "Environment and Sustainable Health: An International Assessment" at the Paris offices of UNESCO on Thursday, November 9th. Co-sponsored by CHE, ARTAC (Association for Research and Treatments Against Cancer and HEAL (Health and Environment Alliance), the conference featured presentations from scientists, physicians, NGOS and public officials on topics related to cancer and other diseases, pregnancy and children's health, green chemistry, the substitution principle and REACH (Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals) legislation in the E.U. Over 700 health professionals, scientist, advocates and students attended the conference.
On Friday, November 10th CHE, and its European Partner affiliate, the Health and Environmental Alliance (HEAL), hosted a very fruitful gathering to identify synergies and discuss potential strategies to complement the CHE and HEAL networks. We will keep you informed as these ideas take shape.
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4. Working and Regional Group Updates
CHE's Cancer Working Group, CHE's Fertility/Early Pregnancy Compromise Working Group and the new CHE Women's Environmental Health Working Group will co-host a conference call on reproductive cancers on Thursday, December 7 at 11am Pacific / 2pm Eastern time. To receive more information about this call, or to RSVP, please contact Julia Varshavsky, at: Julia@HealthandEnvironment.org.
Joining us for this call will be Ana Soto, MD, Professor, Anatomy and Cellular Biology, Tufts University, Gail S. Prins, Ph.D., Professor of Physiology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Cheryl L. Walker, Ph.D., from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, and Donna Baird, Ph.D., MPH, from NIEHS, Michael Lerner, Ph.D., President, Commonweal, and Pete Myers, Ph.D., CEO of Environmental Health Sciences.
CHE's Cancer Working Group (CHE Cancer) ~ Coordinated by Michael Lerner, Ph.D., President, Commonweal and Susan West Marmagas, MPH, Director of Health Programs, Collaborative on Health and the Environment, Susan@HealthandEnvironment.org
The next CHE Cancer Quarterly Call, will take place on Wednesday, November 29 @ 10am Pacific / 1pm Eastern. This call will be a discussion about the links between second-hand smoke and breast cancer. Michael Lerner, Ph.D., President, Commonweal and Founding CHE Partner will moderate this call, with a featured presentation from Stanton E. Glantz, Ph.D., Professor of Medicine and Director, Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at the University of California at San Francisco. If you are interested in joining this call, please contact Julia Varshavsky, at: Julia@HealthandEnvironment.org.
Dr. Glantz has been both an internationally known leading tobacco control scholar and advocate of nonsmokers' rights for more than 20 years. In 2003, the American Public Health Association (APHA) Alcohol and Tobacco section selected Dr. Glantz to receive its 2003 Lifetime Achievement Award for his tobacco control research and advocacy work to reduce tobacco use. Dr. Glantz is the author of three books and more than 150 scientific papers, including the first major review that identified involuntary smoking as a cause of heart disease, and the landmark July 19, 1995 issue of JAMA that showed the tobacco industry knew 30 years earlier that nicotine was addictive and smoking caused cancer. His recent work has focused on the relationship between secondhand tobacco smoke and breast cancer, which he will discuss on this call. Please join us!
CHE's Breast Cancer Working Group ~ coordinated by Michael Lerner, Ph.D., President, Commonweal, and Jeanne Rizzo, Executive Director, Breast Cancer Fund, jeanne@breastcancerfund.org
Save the date for the next CHE Breast Cancer conference call that will take place on Thursday, December 14 at 10am Pacific / 1pm Eastern. This call will be a roundtable discussion about U.S. Breast Cancer Statistics. To RSVP, send email to Julia@HealthandEnvironment.org.
Learning and Developmental Disabilities Initiative (LDDI) Working Group ~ coordinated by Elise Miller, M.Ed., Executive Director, Institute for Children's Environmental Health, emiller@iceh.org
1) The next LDDI national conference call will be held on Thursday, November 30 at 11am Pacific / 2pm Eastern time. The call will feature David Bellinger, PhD, MSc, from the Harvard School of Public Health, who will speak on his research regarding lead exposure, socioeconomic factors and child development. Call-in information will be made available closer to the time of the call.
2) LDDI National Conference 2007, "Priming for Prevention: An Ecological Approach to Research, Education and Policy" will be held May 10-11, in Atlanta at the Morehouse School of Medicine. Former US Surgeon General Dr. David Satcher, among other distinguished speakers, will be presenting on an array of factors—from toxicological to socioeconomice—that can influence healthy child development at this conference. Registration information will soon be available.
3) LDDI presentations were made recently at: the National Association for the Dually Diagnosed annual conference in San Diego; the conference on “Clinical Implications of Environmental Toxicology for Children's Neurodevelopment in Autism” at U.C. Davis’s M.I.N.D. Institute in Sacramento, CA; and the American Public Health Association annual meeting in Boston, MA.
CHE's Washington State Regional Group (CHE-WA) ~ coordinated by Elise Miller, Executive Director, Institute for Children's Environmental Health, emiller@iceh.org
1) The Precautionary Principle Working Group successfully pressed the Washington State Public Health Association at its Joint Conference on Health in mid-October to unanimously pass a resolution on the precautionary principle. Since the resolution did not pass last year, this was a significant victory.
2) The Research and Information Working Group has developed 18 health fact sheets as a complement to its science-based web site on health and environmental issues in Washington State. These will soon be posted on the CHE-WA web site: http//:washington.chenw.org.
3) The Environmental Justice Working Group is following up on specific recommendations from its Environmental Justice/Health Disparities (EJ/HD) meeting in early October. These next steps include compiling a resource CD with pertinent articles, etc. for all participants, holding a meeting to determine how to better fund EJ projects in communities, and developing a mapping project that would include organizations and agencies working on these issues in King county.
4) Information on our 4th Annual Environmental Health Lecture Series at Town Hall Seattle are now posted at: http://washington.chenw.org/lectures.html. The theme this year is “Seeking Solutions” and Terry Collins, Ph.D., a pioneer in the field of Green Chemistry, will be our first speaker on January 24.
5) Next CHE-WA quarterly meeting is now scheduled for January 4 from 2–4 pm at Antioch University. The primary focus will be climate change and health.
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5. Tools, Announcements and Resources for CHE Partners
Request for Information (RFI) for NIH Roadmap Initiatives
The Request for Information (RFI) for NIH Roadmap Initiatives was released on October 20. This is an opportunity to influence the direction of trans-NIH and transdisciplinary efforts. This notice requests input from a very wide audience that includes the general public as well as the scientific community, health professionals, voluntary health organizations, and patient advocates. Also, NIH individual staff scientists, committees, workgroups, and interest groups are able to provide input through the RFI. Respondents are able to submit up to 3 ideas. Nominations must meet the set of criteria established for trans-NIH Roadmap strategic initiatives. To nominate new ideas and to comment on previously submitted ideas, please go to the following website:
http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/rfi_files/NOT-OD-07-011_rfi_add.htm.
New Health Care Without Harm Asthma Report
Unbeknownst to many health care providers, the indoor hospital environment may be making people sick. A new report reveals that substances commonly found in hospitals – including chemicals used to clean floors and medical equipment, fumes from building materials, latex gloves, and other common substances – can trigger an asthma attack or cause the disease. The first-of-its-kind report, released Oct. 18 by Health Care Without Harm, presents rigorously researched information about asthma triggers and asthmagens found in health care settings, and shows how to reduce problematic exposures. To obtain a copy of the report, see www.noharm.org or call 703-243-0056. Health Care Without Harm is an international coalition with 450 groups in 55 countries working to transform the health care industry so it is no longer a source of harm to people and the environment.
Register Now for NCSE's 7th National Conference: Integrating Environment and Human Health
The National Council for Science and the Environment invites you to participate in this conference, which will be held February 1-2, at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington, DC. The conference will serve as a forum for over 800 scientists, educators, and decisionmakers in the environmental and health sciences, policy and government, corporations and civil society, and education to reconnect the unity of the health of people and the health of the planet. Conference participants will identify opportunities for a new approach to science and education regarding health. For more information and to register, please visit: www.ncseonline.org.
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6. CHE Science News Headlines
Most of these articles have been gleaned from Above the Fold.
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7. New CHE Partners
We welcome the many new CHE Partners who have joined since the last newsletter. To see the New CHE Partners and the growing list of all CHE Partners, please visit: http://www.healthandenvironment.org/base/partners-recent.
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Thank you for taking the time to read the latest about CHE. As always, we welcome your feedback, suggestions or questions. Please direct them to Eleni Sotos, CHE National Coordinator, at: Eleni@HealthandEnvironment.org.
Best wishes,
Eleni Sotos, National Coordinator
and
Frieda Nixdorf, Administrative Specialist
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