Chair: Diane Matuszak                                                                          Staff: Leslie Tucker

MEMBERS:
Diane Lynn Matuszak, MD, MPH, Chair
Ruth Etzel, MD, PhD, FACPM, Vice-Chair
Andrew Dannenberg, MD, MPH, FACPM
Jeffrey Derr, MD, MPH
Paul Hodgins, MD, MPH
Joshua Lipsman, MD, MPH
Robert Marino, MD, MPH

The new ACPM Committee on Environmental Health will hold its inaugural meeting during Preventive Medicine 2002 in San Antonio, from 7-8 a.m. on Friday, Feb 22. Members agree that this is an important and timely undertaking for the College – one that has tremendous potential to advance environmental health policy and practice, and simultaneously to strengthen ACPM’s ability to recruit physicians who have an interest in environmental health issues.

At its first meeting the Committee will refine its charge and develop a preliminary work-plan for years 1 through 2 or 3. All members have been encouraged to contribute to the agenda.

Based on conversations with environmental health leaders within and outside the College, there are several potential activities/areas in which the ACPM Committee on Environmental Health can make important and discernible contributions to the field, and these will serve as the "jumping off" point for the Committee’s discussion.

• Become a recognized authoritative, impartial voice on hotly contested environmental health issues (e.g., human ABR implications of non-therapeutic use of antibiotics in agriculture, environmental exposure surveillance, and consumer product labeling);

• Assist CDC in developing new internal and external protocols for disease cluster triage and investigation;

• Develop materials on Environmental Health for inclusion in CDC’s Community Prevention Guides;

• Develop a framework for assessment of genetic tests that may become important tools in environmental public health practice;

• Advance "Prevention through design of the built environment;"

• Advocate for a well-funded, multi-disciplinary, results-driven environmental health research agenda;

• Identify manpower and training needs for the next generation of environmental health physicians and scientists and publicize to key audiences;

• Create/support fellowship and mentorship programs;

• Develop clinical guidelines for environmental health history taking, exposure assessment, and management;

• Work within our family of preventive medicine organizations and reach out to engage/inform other primary care societies as important environmental health issues emerge and/or as the knowledge base advances; and

• Connect public health and the practicing clinician at "ground level," e.g., by putting health department officials on stage before state medical society meetings to discuss local environmental conditions and what clinicians can look for in their practices.