The Center for Health and The Global Environment
The Center for Health and the Global Environment was founded in 1996 at Harvard Medical School to expand environmental education at medical schools and to further investigate and promote awareness of the human health consequences of global environmental change. By focusing on health, the center is able to reach people in concrete, personal terms they can relate to and understand, and to make the strongest possilbe case that human beings are an intimate part of the environment and that we cannot damage it without damaging ourselves.
The Center is the only one of its kind at a medical school in the U.S. and is an “Official Collaborating Center” of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
The mission of the Center is to help people understand that our health, and that of our children, depends on the health of the environment, and that we must do everything we can to protect it.
To fulfill its mission, the Center organizes a number of programs for physicians, scientists, policy-makers, the media, and the general public.
Core, on-going programs include:
Medical and Secondary Education:This program serves to educate physicians, public health experts, environmental scientists, policy-makers, professionals and the public about the dependency of human health on the health of the environment. The program includes an annual Human Health and Global Environmental Change evening lecture series held at Harvard Medical School, a topic-based multimedia website and easily accessible secondary education curricula.
Policy-Maker Education:The Center holds an annual, intensive course for the U.S. Congress on the environment and human health and regularly updates congressional staff by holding briefings in the House and Senate.
Sustaining Life: How Human Health Depends on Biodiveristy will be the most comprehensive examination yet available on the subject of how Nature contributes to human health.
Climate Change Futures,
a groundbreaking initiative detailing the health, ecological and economic risks of climate instability.
Healthy Ocean, Healthy Humans aims to create educational materials, in collaboration with aquariums and museums, to inform the general public of their health connections to the ocean environment.
Healthy and Sustainable Food:A program to increase public awareness about food choices that are healthy for people, and for the environment.
Scientists and Evangelicals Initiative is a new program designed to develop relationships of trust and mutual respect and understanding between leading members of the scientific and evangelical communities so that we can begin to work together to protect the global environment.
Media and Outreach:The Center hosts numerous activities designed for a wide range of audiences to increase awareness about human health and global environmental change.
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*Photo by Liza Green. © 2007 President and Fellows of Harvard College on behalf of HMS Media Services, All Rights Reserved. |
