Background and Goals for the Workshop

The goals of environmental health are to maintain a healthy, livable environment for humans and other living species, an environment that promotes well being and a high quality of mental and physical health for its inhabitants. In an effort to increase our knowledge, improve our understanding, and better define environmental health for the future, the Institute of Medicine will conduct a two-day workshop titled Rebuilding the Unity of Health and the Environment: A New Vision of Environmental Health for the 21st Century. The workshop will be held in the National Academy of Sciences Auditorium from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. on Tuesday, June 20th and Wednesday, June 21st. The purpose of the workshop is to raise awareness, promote community-based environmental health, and mold multidisciplinary partnerships to redefine and improve environmental health.

Responsible leadership requires that policy makers, health professionals, industry representatives, and the general public all carry an expanded and enhanced vision of environmental health forward into the 21st century. New approaches toward building environments that actively improve health will be required, including strategies to deal with waste, unhealthy buildings, urban congestion, suburban sprawl, poor housing, poor nutrition, and environment related stress. The involvement and leadership of individuals from many different sectors of society is needed to address environmental health concerns in their local communities. The workshop will bring together a broad group of representatives, including business leaders, economists, architects, urban planners, engineers, public health scientists, environmental scientists, social scientists, clergy, educators, and citizens who will share and discuss their views on the elements for a healthful environment. Only by thinking about environmental health on multiple levels will it be possible to merge various strategies to protect both the environment and health.

Environmental health has become narrowly focused and defined around regulations and debates about the impacts on economic growth and legal processes that promote harmful divisiveness or conflict. As a result, the perspective of human and ecosystem health is often lost when attempting to achieve a specific regulation. This workshop will try to overcome the difficulties hindering the environmental health arena by creating new partnerships and developing new ideas to combat such problems.