Rebuilding the Unity of Health and the Environment: A New Vision of Environmental Health for the 21st Century (2001)

Summary: This is a summary of the workshop “Rebuilding the Unity of Health and the Environment: A New Vision of Environmental Health for the 21st Century.” The goal of this workshop was to emphasize the connection between human health and the natural, built, and social environments. This workshop integrated talks from many fields and created a dialogue among various environmental health stakeholders. Many individuals believe that a new vision is needed because the infrastructure for linking environmental health and public health is not working as well as it should. Commonly one finds that environmental health at the local level has become narrowly focused, very much defined around regulations and the attendant regulatory debate. Instead, asserted many workshop participants, environmental health needs to be concerned with establishing and maintaining a healthy livable environment for humans and other species. This environment must coexist with a setting in which population growth, manufacturing, and agriculture can thrive.