Sponsors

Strengthening Environmental Justice and Decision Making: A Symposium on the Science of Disproportionate Environmental Health Impacts

Walter E. Washington Convention Center
Washington DC

March 17 - 19, 2010

Sponsors

Host Offices

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

National Center for Environmental Economics
EPA’s National Center for Environmental Economics (NCEE) offers a centralized source of technical expertise to the Agency, as well as other federal agencies, Congress, universities, and other organizations. NCEE’s staff specializes in analyzing the economic and health impacts of environmental regulations and policies and assists EPA by informing important policy decisions with sound economics and other sciences. NCEE also contributes to and manages EPA’s research on environmental economics to improve the methods and data available for policy analysis. For more information, please visit:  http://yosemite.epa.gov/ee/epa/eed.nsf/webpages/homepage

National Center for Environmental Research
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) National Center for Environmental Research (NCER) funds grants, fellowships, and small businesses that conduct environmental research to protect human health and the environment. By funding some of the top researchers in the nation, NCER works to identify and solve environmental problems and provide scientific leadership to protect our planet and our health.

Specifically, NCER’s Human Health Research Science To Achieve Results (STAR) program’s competitive, peer-reviewed grants program funds an array of outstanding grantees that fill unique needs for exposures in science, epidemiologic, and community-based participatory research on environmental public health outcomes of great concern. We fund independent research on a wide variety of environmental and health issues such as children’s environmental health, interpretation of biomarkers of exposures, identification of early indicators of disease resulting from exposures to environmental toxicants, development of public health outcome indicators, role of sociodemographic contextual factors and social stressors in exposures to environmental contaminants and cumulative risks, and impacts of global climate change environmental contamination on tribal communities and traditional practices. For more information, please visit:  https://www.epa.gov/ncer

The National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory
As part of EPA’s Office of Research and Development (ORD), the National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory (NHEERL) is the Agency’s focal point for scientific research on the effects of contaminants and environmental stressors on human health and ecosystem integrity. The Laboratory’s mission embraces three objectives:  (1) Perform human health and ecological effects research of the highest scientific quality in support of the science needs of the Agency; (2) Demonstrate leadership in identifying, studying, and resolving important environmental health and ecological effects issues and in influencing the national environmental research agenda; and (3) Provide scientific and technical assistance to EPA Program and Regional Offices and to local, state, regional, national, and international governments and organizations. Pursuit of these objectives undergirds NHEERL’s contribution to ORD being recognized as a premier environmental research organization. For more information, please visit:  https://www.epa.gov/nheerl

Office of Children’s Health Protection
EPA established the Office of Children’s Health Protection (OCHP) in 1997 to support the Agency as it embraced the 1996 National Agenda to Protect Children’s Health from Environmental Threats and the 1997 Executive Order 13045:  Protection of Children’s Health from Environmental Health Risks and Safety Risks. The mission of EPA’s Children’s Office is to make the health protection of children a fundamental goal of public health and environmental protection in the United States and around the world. Ensuring that our children are protected from exposure to unsafe levels of toxins and pollution or other environmental threats in their homes, schools, or anywhere else is central to EPA’s work. Children face greater threats from environmental pollutants than adults because of differences in their physiology, activity patterns, and development. Not all children are the same:  we continue to see disparities in exposures and health outcomes among the poor, African American, Latino, and other ethnic minorities. For more information, please visit:  http://yosemite.epa.gov/ochp/ochpweb.nsf/content/homepage.htm

Office of Environmental Justice
The mission of the Office of Environmental Justice is to facilitate EPA’s efforts to improve the environment and public health in environmentally and economically distressed communities by integrating environmental justice into all programs, policies, and activities. For more information, please visit:  https://www.epa.gov/compliance/environmentaljustice

Co-Sponsors

American Public Health Association
The American Public Health Association (APHA) is the oldest and most diverse organization of public health professionals in the world and has been working to improve public health since 1872. The Association aims to protect all Americans, their families, and their communities from preventable, serious health threats and strives to assure that community-based health promotion and disease prevention activities and preventive health services are universally accessible in the United States. APHA represents a broad array of health professionals and others who care about their own health and the health of their communities. More information is available at http://www.apha.org

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry
The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), based in Atlanta, Georgia, is a federal public health agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). ATSDR’s mission is to serve the public by using the best science, taking responsive public health actions, and providing trusted health information to prevent harmful exposures and disease-related exposures to toxic substances. Since the discovery of contamination in New York State’s Love Canal first brought the problem of hazardous wastes to national attention in the 1970s, thousands of hazardous sites have been identified around the country. Formally organized in 1985, ATSDR was created by the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA), more commonly known as the Superfund law. The Superfund program is responsible for finding and cleaning up the most dangerous hazardous waste sites in the country. EPA currently targets more than 1,200 National Priorities List (NPL) sites for cleanup. ATSDR is the lead federal public health agency responsible for determining human health effects associated with toxic exposures, preventing continued exposures, and mitigating associated human health risks at these NPL sites and others throughout the country. ATSDR serves the public by using the best science, taking responsive public health actions, and providing trusted health information to prevent harmful exposures and diseases related to toxic substances. ATSDR is directed by congressional mandate to perform specific functions concerning the effect on public health of hazardous substances in the environment. These functions include public health assessments of waste sites, health consultations concerning specific hazardous substances, health surveillance and registries, response to emergency releases of hazardous substances, applied research in support of public health assessments, information development and dissemination, and education and training concerning hazardous substances. For more information, please visit:  http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov

National Center for Environmental Health
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Environmental Health (NCEH) plans, directs, and coordinates a national program to maintain and improve the health of the American people by promoting a healthy environment and by preventing premature death and avoidable illness and disability caused by non-infectious, non-occupational environmental and related factors. NCEH is especially committed to safeguarding the health of populations that are particularly vulnerable to certain environmental hazards—children, the elderly, and people with disabilities. NCEH seeks to achieve its mission through science, service, and leadership. It conducts research in the laboratory and in the field to investigate the effects of the environment on health and tracks and evaluates environment-related health problems through surveillance systems. NCEH also helps domestic and international agencies and organizations prepare for and respond to natural, technologic, humanitarian, and terrorism-related environmental emergencies. On the basis of research and surveillance results, NCEH works with partners to protect human health. Interventions range from responding to emergencies, educating and training various audiences, and developing new standards and guidelines to helping formulate public policy. NCEH strives to protect health over the entire lifespan. NCEH works to promote optimal fetal, infant, and child development, including preventing birth defects and developmental disabilities, and enhance health and quality of life and prevent secondary conditions among children, adolescents, and adults with disabilities. For more information please visit:  http://www.cdc.gov/nceh

National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) is the federal agency responsible for conducting research and making recommendations for the prevention of work-related injury and illness. NIOSH’s mission is to generate new knowledge in the field of occupational safety and health and to transfer that knowledge into practice for the betterment of workers. To accomplish this mission, NIOSH conducts scientific research, develops guidance and authoritative recommendations, disseminates information, and responds to requests for workplace health-hazard evaluations. NIOSH provides national and world leadership to prevent work-related illness, injury, disability, and death by gathering information, conducting scientific research, and translating the knowledge gained into products and services, including scientific information products, training videos, and recommendations for improving safety and health in the workplace. One of NIOSH’s current emphases is on conducting research and developing materials to eliminate health disparities arising from disproportionate risks at the workplace for low-wage, minority, immigrant, older, younger, and other higher risk worker groups. For more information, please visit:  http://www.cdc.gov/niosh

Johns Hopkins University’s Center for a Livable Future
The Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future (CLF) is a not-for-profit organization within the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The CLF promotes research and develops and communicates information about the complex interrelationships among water, diet, food production, environment, and human health while advancing an ecological perspective in reducing threats to the health of the public. It also promotes policies that protect health, the global environment, and the ability to sustain life for future generations. Central to the mission of the CLF are both the impacts of industrial food animal production on rural and farming communities and the consequences of diminished access to safe and nutritious food among disadvantaged persons. For more information, please visit:  http://www.jhsph.edu/clf

National Institutes of Health (NIH)

The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences
The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), located in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, is one of 27 research institutes and centers that comprise the National Institutes of Health (NIH), DHHS. The mission of the NIEHS is to reduce the burden of human illness and disability by understanding how the environment influences the development and progression of human disease. NIEHS research focuses on diseases that have a strong environmental component and a high or increasing prevalence in the U.S. population. Using integrated teams of scientists from varied and relevant disciplines, NIEHS can address complex hypotheses by more effectively identifying environmental health hazards and coupling this information with new tools to better understand the causes of disease. This knowledge is then translated into public health initiatives and policies that can have immediate and profound impacts on people’s health. For more information, please visit:  http://www.niehs.nih.gov

National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities
The mission of the National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NCMHD) is to promote minority health and to lead, coordinate, support, and assess the NIH effort to reduce and ultimately eliminate health disparities. In this effort, NCMHD will conduct and support basic, clinical, social, and behavioral research; promote research infrastructure and training; foster emerging programs; disseminate information; and reach out to minority and other health disparity communities. For more information, please visit:  http://ncmhd.nih.gov/default.html

Office of Minority Health
The Office of Minority Health (OMH) advises the Secretary of Health and Human Services and the Assistant Secretary for Health on public health program activities affecting American Indians and Alaska Natives, Asian Americans, Blacks/African Americans, Hispanics/Latinos, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders.

The mission of OMH is to improve and protect the health of racial and ethnic minority populations through the development and coordination of health policies and programs. OMH serves as the Federal lead for eliminating health disparities for racial and ethnic minorities. For more information please visit:  http://minorityhealth.hhs.gov

Top of page