Monday Workshops
October 26, 2009: 1:30 pm – 3:00 pm
A 1: The Missing Piece: Healthy Places for Older and Disabled People
Typical community planning documents call for creating environments suitable for older adults and persons with a disability. However, many approaches fail to fully appreciate the needs and desires of older adults, and few studies have examined the interaction between community environments and those with mobility impairments. Participants in this session will learn about ways to address these issues. This session will review a recent survey which examined how specific characteristics of environments affect community mobility for wheelchair users. Participants will also explore ways to address transportation and mobility issues to prevent older adult pedestrian injuries. Presentations also will include an overview of projects initiated by the University of Maine’s Center on Aging and Portland State University which aim to demonstrate the importance of engaging with older adults and their advocates in the community in the preparation of accessible, safe, and healthy communities.
Rebecca Naumann: Older adult pedestrian injuries in the U.S.: what are the leading causes and how big is the problem?
Jon Sanford: Physical Environmental Barriers to Community Mobility and Participation of Wheelchair Users
EleanorSmith: Housing Policy for Older and Disabled People: The Missing Piece
Kathy Sykes: Leaving A Green Legacy: What Elders Can Do to Create Healthy Communities
A 2: Down in the Dirt: Exploring Human Exposures through the Soil Pathway
Knowledge of soil composition can provide critical information on human exposures via the soil pathway. This session will discuss efforts to assess soil constituents and the factors influencing geochemical variation on national and regional scales. Continental surveys, including the North American Soil Geochemical Landscapes Project, will explore refined sampling and analytical protocols, as well as the spatial distributions of toxic elements such as mercury, arsenic and lead. Additional presentations will cover anthrax-causing bacteria in soil following flood events in Post-Katrina New Orleans and asbestos containing materials in sand at Illinois Beach State Park.
Dale Griffin: Bacillus anthracis in N. American soils: Two long-range transects and within post-Katrina New Orleans
David Smith: The North American Soil Geochemical Landscapes Project: Providing data for exposure assessment
Laurel Woodruff: Continental-scale variation in soil geochemistry: Implications for human exposure
A 3: The National Environmental Public Health Tracking Network: Informing Public Health Practice
The National Environmental Public Health Tracking Network (NEPHTN) was created in response to a report by the Pew Environmental Health Commission which found “a gap in critical knowledge that hinders our national efforts to reduce or eliminate diseases that might be prevented by better managing environmental factors.” The NEPHTN is a web?based, secure, distributed information system of standardized electronic health and environmental data and measures. It provides nationally consistent data and measures from 16 grantee states and New York City, and various national partners focusing on asthma, acute myocardial infarction, birth defects, carbon monoxide poisoning, childhood lead poisoning, air and water quality, and cancer. This session will describe how the NEPHTN informs public health practice and how two state programs are using the system to explore data and contextual information with the goal of identifying hazardous exposures and geographic and temporal trends in health outcomes.
Suzanne Condon: Addressing Community Concerns and Generating Hypotheses Using Environmental & Health Tracking Data
Erik Hummelman: >The utility of the National Environmental Public Health Tracking Network for informing
Greg Kearney: The utility of the National Environmental Public Health Tracking Network for informing public health
Abraham Kulungara: We Need You, Too: Connecting unfunded states into the tracking network
A 4: Promoting Safe Walking and Cycling: Lessons from the Field
"In this session, participants will learn about Ciclovia, an innovative program in Bogota, Columbia that closes 70 miles of roads to automobiles every Sunday and opens them to cyclists, walkers, runners, and dancers. This session will also highlight the Outdoor Chattanooga Mobile Bicycle Fleet, as will innovative programs developed by the Decatur and Belvedere Safe Routes to School Programs. Participants will also gain knowledge of guidelines and best practices in the development of walkable urban thoroughfares developed by the Congress for the New Urbanism and the Institute of Traffic Engineers.
Monica Leap: A Review of Current Events and Trends in Ciclovia Programs across America
Margo Pedroso: How local Safe Routes to School programs are getting kids active and improving the built environment
Philip Pugliese: Bike Share in Chattanooga: A Corporate Cooperative Model
A 5: Will the labs be ready?
On March 20, 1995 Tokyo’s subways were the target of a Sarin release—killing a dozen people, severely injuring fifty, producing exposure symptoms for 1,000 and sending over 5,000 people to Tokyo hospitals. The session will discuss the development the Laboratory Response Network (LRN)—a network of public health laboratories, and address the question, “will the labs in the U.S. be ready to respond to a chemical attack?” Expansion of the scope of the LRN to include an “all hazards” chemical emergency response capability will also be described with particular focus given to preparedness for radiological response. Included will be a discussion of CDC’s current efforts to develop the Urine Radionuclide Screen (URS) to assess exposure of large populations to 20+ priority radionuclides. Session participants also will hear from experts in Michigan who maintain the state’s level one state public health laboratory. One of ten in the U.S. designated to provide surge?capacity for CDC's chemical terrorism response program, the presentation will focus on the lab’s work, training, and drills, and some of the challenges faced as the state works to maintain a high quality emergency-ready laboratory. In addition, session participants will learn about the programmatic frameworks and analytical capabilities of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Environmental Response Laboratory Network (ELRN) and the Food and Drug Administration’s Food Emergency Response Network.
Kathleen Caldwell: Laboratory Preparedness for Radiological Emergencies: Federal Perspectives
Frances Downes: Michigan’s Prospective on Chemical Emergency Response
Fred Fricke: The Chemical Component of the Food Emergency Response Network
Rudy Johnson: Will the labs be ready?
Terry Smith: Will the Labs Be Ready to Respond to a Chemical Terrorism Event?
A 6: Safe from the Tap?: Hazards in Drinking Water from Private and Municipal Wells
Safe drinking water supplies are critical for protecting public health. Naturally occurring, anthropogenic, and microbial contamination of drinking water can result in a variety of harmful human exposures. In this session, a discussion of municipal drinking water risks will feature perfluorinated chemicals from fire fighting training sites. In addition, national and community projects to monitor unregulated private wells will be highlighted. Presentations will assess regional patterns in water quality including contamination by Polonium-210, fluoride, arsenic, and uranium and the synergistic effect of mixtures. Data needs for understanding the potential health risks associated with private wells will be addressed by the New Jersey Environmental Public Health Tracking Project.
Leslie DeSimone: "Quality of Water from Private Wells in the United States, 1991-2004
Kai Elgethun: "Exposure to Fluoride, Arsenic and Uranium from Well Water in Southwest Idaho
Barbara Goun: Presenting New Jersey Private Well Water Data to the Public
James Kelly: Perfluorinated Aqueous Film Forming Foams (AFFF) in Municipal Wells Near Fire Fighting Training Site
Ralph Seiler: Polonium 210 in groundwater in Nevada
A 7: Adding to the Mix: Diversifying and Strengthening the Environmental Public Health Workforce
The oncoming shortage of environmental health professionals has increased the need to build capacity within the field and draw diverse professionals into the public health work force. Session attendees will be exposed to the development of distance learning materials for pediatric health professionals and will also be educated on integrating environmental health into all domains of nursing practices, education, research, and policy. In addition, the Arkansas Public Health Laboratory will highlight its Environmental Health Fellowship program which promotes public health laboratory science and technology. Attendees will also have the opportunity to learn about best practices in marketing and diversity enhancement within the environmental health field, to increase the pipeline and diversity of the environmental health workforce.
Kim Jenkins: Developing Distance Learning for Pediatric Health Professionals
Jeffery Moran: Promoting Public Health by Revitalizing Environmental Health Fellowship Program
Yalonda Sinde: Marketing Environmental Public Health: Strategies for Increasing the Workforce & Diversity
Hilda Swirsky: Canadian Nurses' Environmental Health Collaboration from Coast to Coast to Coast
A 8: Wild-Food Eaters: Are You What You Eat?
This session explores potentially harmful exposures through wild-caught food. Anglers, hunters, and harvesters risk exposure to heavy metals, PCBs, pesticides, and other chemicals. This session will address hunter health and heavy metals using a study of lead bullets in Wisconsin large game; exposure of Alaskan Yupik natives to PCBs as a result of reliance on marine life; and community advisories on fish types, preparation methods, and levels of contamination alongside key social issues faced by some communities. The session also will present an analysis of mortality of consumers in the Great Lakes region to assess the health benefits of fish consumption weighted against the concern for adverse health effects from eating contaminated fish, as well as a discussion about the benefits and risks associated with consumption of farmed and wild shrimp and red drum.
Katrina Korfmacher: Rapid assessment of subsistence fishing patterns in urban communities
John Leffler: Human Health Benefits and Risks Associated With Consumption of Farmed and Wild Shrimp and Red Drum
Robert Thiboldeaux: Deer Hunting in Wisconsin and the Potential for Ingestion Exposure to Lead Fragments in Venison
Carrie Tomasallo: Causes of Death among an Aging Cohort of Great Lakes Sport Fish Consumers
A 9: Found in Translation: Implementing Research-based Environmental Health Programs
Translating research results into relevant and implementable public health programs is often difficult. This session will cover various projects that work toward translating research efforts and their associated results in to practical, applied public health programs. The Baltimore City Health Department is translating an asthma home visiting program to a public health program serving 250 schoolchildren with persistent asthma. The session will describe several practical issues affecting their translational work to-date and discuss methods for resolution in a practice setting. Cornell’s Breast Cancer and Environmental Risk Factors program illustrates general and specific challenges to translating research to outreach and educational programs. Finally discussion of two EPA funded programs addressing pesticide education among practicing clinicians and students in health professions schools will illuminate similar translational challenges.
Amy Liebman : Pesticides and National Strategies for Health Care Providers in the Educational and Practice Setting
Pat McLaine : Research to Practice Adaptation: lessons learned in translating effective research to public health
Carmi Orenstein: Development of a Model of Environmental Translational Research for Cancer Prevention
A 10: Speaking of Success: Students, Youth, Teachers, and Medical Professionals As Climate Change Advocates
Informed individual action is required to fully address the threat of climate change. Teachers, learners and professionals must develop capacity as climate advocates and can benefit from additional knowledge and skills in this area. This session includes presentations on the need to improve education programs about climate and health and the need to address the potential threat of environmental illiteracy in the medical community. The way in which the public frames climate change debates will also be examined, in order to determine how re-framing the debate can encourage public involvement and allow public health professionals to be more actively engaged. Additionally, strategies for empowering both youths and professionals to become vocal climate stewards will be discussed, highlighting the potentials gain to be had in improving individual action.
Wayne Garfinkel: Climate Change and Children’s Health: A Campaign for our Nation’s Youth
Edward Maibach: How Six Americas React to Climate Change Framed as a Public Health Issue
Mona Sarfaty: Physician education on environmental health and knowledge on the health effects of climate change
Kristen Welker-Hood: PSR's Code Black: Coal's Assault on America's Health, a campaign to prevent global warming and pollution
A 11: Towards Sustainability: Local Health Department Initiatives
The integration of sustainability initiatives into local public health decisions has been an on-going process. This session will examine the development and outcomes of several local-level sustainability plans around the country, including those implemented by the cities of Minneapolis and Baltimore. The use of local regulation, community engagement and healthy housing, among other interventions, will be discussed. Coordination and collaboration between multiple stakeholders including city government entities and community organizations will be examined in order to assess current successes as well as short-comings in the local public health response to sustainability.
Daniel Huff: Minneapolis Sustainability Initiative, focusing local government action on environmental health
Ruth Ann Norton: How Baltimore's Sustainability Plan Will Advance Public Health Policies and Structures
Daniel Sinclair: What now? Policy Perspectives from a Climate Change Survey of State and Territorial Health Agencies
A 12: Children’s Environmental Health: A to Z
Infants and children are particularly susceptible to health impacts from exposure to harmful chemicals. Concerning exposures may occur during pregnancy before children are born, and continue as infants and children explore their homes and go to daycare centers and to schools. Interest and research in children’s environmental health is burgeoning, policies and regulations to protect children from chemical exposures are being established around the United States and globally, and partnerships continue to be formed around these issues. This session provides a broad view of the challenges of addressing children’s environmental health. The EPA’s project to build capacity to address environmental health issues during pregnancy will be discussed. Also, pediatric environmental exposures and associated health outcomes, the role of Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Units (PEHSUs) in advancing children’s environmental health, and the lessons learned from formulating and implementing Washington state’s 2008 Children’s Safe Products Act, will be shared to provide an introductory understanding of children’s environmental health.
Nancy Beaudet: Identification and Evaluation of Pediatric Environmental Exposures
Catherine Karr: Implementing Child Product Chemical Safety Policy – Priorities, practicalities, and public health practices
Melissa Mathias: m Addressing Environmental Health Issues with Women of Childbearing Age
Perry Sheffield: An Overview of Region 2 School Related Environmental Exposures
Michelle Zeager: Aluminum testing in children: What do results and reference ranges mean?
A 13: Collaborating for Kids: The National Children’s Study
As the largest long-term study of environmental and genetic influences on children’s health ever conducted in the United States, the National Children’s Study (NCS) will follow 100,000 children from before birth to age 21. The NCS is led by a consortium of federal partners: the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (including the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences of the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The study will include children from across the United States, and will be conducted in 105 locations selected to ensure fair representation from diverse ethnic, racial, economic, religious, geographic, and social groups. This session will offer information on the goals, development, hypotheses, and design of the NCS, including an explanation of the roles of CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health’s Division of Laboratory Sciences and CDC more broadly.
Dean Baker: The National Children's Study: Experience in the Field
Adolfo Correa: The Role of CDC in the NCS
Michael Dellarco: Overview of the National Children’s Study
Mary Mortensen: NCS Pilot Study: The Role of the NCEH Laboratory
A 14: Race, Place, and the Environment: Emerging Issues in Environmental Justice
Environmental justice has been defined as the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies. This session will focus on environmental issues in post-Katrina New Orleans and explore the findings of other projects and studies related to environmental justice issues. These include a study to identify the environment for mold and examine its relationship to skin sensitivities in children with asthma and a review of case studies describing how community unity can lead to a walkable, bikeable, human-scaled neighborhood in a reinvigorated New Orleans. This session will also highlight the findings of a comparison study of two communities in Louisiana—one a fence-line community, the other a non-fence-line community—to characterize community perceptions about health and environmental issues and the findings of a study describing the relationship between the built environment and health from the perspectives of poor, urban African Americans in the Atlanta area. The session will also include a discussion of the importance of involving communities of color in climate change preparedness planning.
Liz Langlois: Health and Environmental Perceptions in a Fence-line and a Non Fence-line Community in Louisiana
Yanique Redwood: How do African Americans in a Poor Urban Neighborhood Frame the Link between the Built Environment a
Stephen Verderber: On the Equitable Restoration of the Healthcare Infrastructure in Post-Katrina New Orleans
LuAnn White: Characterization of Post-Katrina Indoor Allergen Exposures among New Orleans Children with Asthma
A 15: Outside These Four Walls: Trends and Challenges in the Healthy Homes Movement
As the Healthy Homes movement gains traction nationwide, more communities are beginning to look at ways to address a wider range of home-based environmental hazards and enhance the health and safety of homes. This goal is coupled with an aim to reduce disparities in the availability of healthy, safe, affordable, and environmentally friendly homes and is dependent on, among other factors, the availability of timely and accurate health and housing data. This session will feature presentations related to household water hauling in the Navajo Nation and the provision of healthy as well as a discussion of major challenges and trends relative to the collection of healthy housing data.
Magaly Angeloni: Striving to standardize the collection of health and housing data
Karen Bradham : "AHHS: The Relationship between Pesticides Measured from Residential Floors, Pesticide Usage, and Housing
Matthew Murphy: Investigation of Household Drinking Water Sources and Contaminant Exposures in the Navajo Nation
Lisa Rossi: Bedbugs: Working Towards an Innovative Collaborative Solution for an Ancient Public Health Problem
Robert Vanderslice: The Challenges of Providing Safe and Affordable Housing to Refugees
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