Translating National Policy To Improve Environmental Conditions Impacting Public Health Through Community Planning

This first-of-its-kind volume traces rarely explored links between public policy, the state of the environment, and key issues in public health, with recommendations for addressing longstanding intractable problems. Experts across diverse professions use their wide knowledge and experience to discuss hunger and food sustainability, land use, chronic and communicable diseases, child mortality, and global water quality. Interventions described are varied as well, from green technology breakthroughs to regulatory accountability, innovative urban planning and community policing programs. Chapters build and expand on each other’s themes inspiring deeper understanding and critical thinking that further prompts readers to develop practical solutions leading to improvements in planetary and population health outcomes. Included in the coverage: · The challenge of implementing macroeconomic policy in an increasingly microeconomic world · Green aid flows: trends and opportunities for developing countries · Planning healthy communities: abating preventable chronic diseases · Foundations of community health: planning access to public facilities · International changes in environmental conditions and their personal health consequences Translating National Policy to Improve Environmental Conditions Impacting Public Health is developed for educators, students, and policymakers to generate awareness and review options to help create change in their communities. Federal agencies such as the Department of Health and Human Services, the National Institutes of Health, the EPA, and Housing and Urban Development will also find it salient.

Three Facets of Public Health and Paths to Improvements provides an overview on how specific indicators like the environment, culture and behavior play a role in developing improved outcomes for public health in local, regional, national and global health policy and concerns. Divided into three sections, the book examines the impact of the environment and social determinants on public health. It also illustrates the interrelation of these facets as predictors of public health, explores their institutional, organizational and individual impacts, and considers the way multiple stakeholders must engage to improve conditions that impact health. The book utilizes various research methods, including fundamental, systematics, qualitative and quantitative. Readers can use the information to inform future research and better understand an existing health problem and outcomes. Offers a multisectoral (MSA) approach to understanding environmental, behavioral and social facets of public health Includes an expert analysis (e.g., qualitative, quantitative) approach in relation to policy and existing problems Combines an analytic approach with educational presentation to engage diverse readership

For the Oneida people, yukwanénste has two meanings: our corn and our precious. Corn has walked alongside the Oneida and other Haudenosaunee people since creation, playing an integral role in their daily and ceremonial lives throughout their often turbulent history. The relationship between corn and the Oneida has changed over time, but the spirit of this important resource has remained by their side, helping them heal along the way. In Our Precious Corn: Yukwanénste, author Rebecca M. Webster (Kanyʌʔtake·lu), an Oneida woman and Indigenous corn grower, weaves together the words of explorers, military officers, and anthropologists, as well as historic and other contemporary Haudenosaunee people, to tell a story about their relationships with corn. Interviews with over fifty Oneida community members describe how the corn has made positive impacts on their lives, as well as hopeful visions for its future. As an added bonus, the book includes an appendix of different cooking and preparation methods for corn, including traditional and modern recipes.

This book develops "organizing eating" as an organizational-communication centered framework for understanding how communication and power combine to actively shape eating and working in the U.S. food system. Drawing together established scholars, the book sheds light on how the interconnected aspects of power are communicative in nature, shaping and constraining the possibilities for organizing across the food system. The chapters provide grounded insight into the role of racism, corporate and state power, food cooperatives, urban farm systems, food policy, and labor practices, drawing attention to the pathways needed to pursue more equitable food systems. Providing readers with a set of useful critical conceptual tools and an understanding of communication frameworks, chapters identify common principles for critical organizing within the food movement and addresses the relevance of the COVID-19 pandemic and the national uprising against anti-Black violence for understanding the urgent possibilities of food justice. This cohesive collection of cutting-edge scholarship will be of interest to organizational communication scholars, critical/cultural communication scholars, environmental communication scholars, and health communication scholars; and the interdisciplinary fields of environmental studies, agriculture and food studies, and organization and labor studies.

Factoring health and related costs into decision making is essential to confronting the nation's health problems and enhancing public well-being. Some policies and programs historically not recognized as relating to health are believed or known to have important health consequences. For example, public health has been linked to an array of policies that determine the quality and location of housing, availability of public transportation, land use and street connectivity, agricultural practices and the availability of various types of food, and development and location of businesses and industry. Improving Health in the United States: The Role of Health Impact Assessment offers guidance to officials in the public and private sectors on conducting HIAs to evaluate public health consequences of proposed decisions -- such as those to build a major roadway, plan a city's growth, or develop national agricultural policies -- and suggests actions that could minimize adverse health impacts and optimize beneficial ones. Several approaches could be used to incorporate aspects of health into decision making, but HIA holds particular promise because of its applicability to a broad array of programs, consideration of both adverse and beneficial health effects, ability to consider and incorporate various types of evidence, and engagement of communities and stakeholders in a deliberative process. The report notes that HIA should not be assumed to be the best approach to every health policy question but rather should be seen as part of a spectrum of public health and policy-oriented approaches. The report presents a six-step framework for conducting HIA of proposed policies, programs, plans, and projects at federal, state, tribal, and local levels, including within the private sector. In addition, the report identifies several challenges to the successful use of HIA, such as balancing the need to provide timely information with the realities of varying data quality, producing quantitative estimates of health effects, and engaging stakeholders.

As climate change adaptation rises up the international policy agenda, matched by increasing funds and frameworks for action, there are mounting questions over how to ensure the needs of vulnerable people on the ground are met. Community-based adaptation (CBA) is one growing proposal that argues for tailored support at the local level to enable vulnerable people to identify and implement appropriate community-based responses to climate change themselves. Community Based Adaptation to Climate Change: Scaling it up explores the challenges for meeting the scale of the adaptation challenge through CBA. It asks the fundamental questions: How can we draw replicable lessons to move from place-based projects towards more programmatic adaptation planning? How does CBA fit with larger scale adaptation policy and programmes? How are CBA interventions situated within the institutions that enable or undermine adaptive capacity? Combining the research and experience of prominent adaptation and development theorists and practitioners, this book presents cutting edge knowledge that moves the debate on CBA forward towards effective, appropriate, and ‘scaled-up’ adaptive action.

The book provides an analysis of existing local planning processes and initiatives in the WHO European Region, identifies their common features and describes how they interrelate with and support national environmental health action plans (NEHAPs). Based on a two-year project carried out in the eastern half of the Region, this book also provides guidance and options for the development of local plans (LEHAPs) that give the levels of flexibility necessary to ensure that a bottom-up planning process can occur. It adresses both local and national policy-makers and professionals in the environmental, health and other sectors

An advocacy brief calling for stronger multisectoral action to promote and enable more physical activity through provision of supportive environments, accessible programmes and sustained communication campaigns in all communities. It provides global guidance on priority actions and is suitable for use by advocates, government and non-government organizations.