Blog # 2

 Environmental Health and Nursing

The public awareness and interest in all things “green” is creating a demand for nurses to understand the relationship between human health and the environments in which we live, learn, work, and play. Nurses, who are one of the most trusted sources of information by the public, must be in a position to both respond to questions about the environment and its relationship to health with credible, evidence-based information, as well as provide leadership in making the necessary changes in our policies and practices.

There are various associations and organizations that working on environmental health, for example;

•  Alliance of Nurses for healthy Environments(ANHE): The Mission of ANHE is promoting healthy people and healthy environments by educating and leading the nursing profession, advancing research, incorporating evidence-based practice, and influencing policy.
• American Public Health Association (APHA) represents a diverse array of health professionals, educators, environmentalists, policy makers, and other professionals working to protect the health of Americans and their communities.
• Association of Women’s Health, Obstetric, and Neonatal Nurses (AWHONN) is a nonprofit membership organization that promotes the health of women and newborns.

Currently I am not a member of any nursing organization. However, with this course I have been provoked to join in one of them to voice about important of environmental health and the role of nurses.

I heard about fate and transport when I was reading National Geographic News, There was an interesting story from . I posted it in my blog.

I do not know any specific person as the modern day Rachel Carson in my community or country, but I think many people play the same role since they are updated with new information regarding side effects of chemicals and even daily using products. These people voice about the effect of chemical and toxins dangers on the health. We nurses are one of them.

Global population is increasing by about 1.5 percent per year, a growth rate (should it persist) that in less than half a century will double the number of people who live on the planet. On the other hand, modern medical techniques are producing life extension but not healthy life extension, and we are seeing numbers of old and chronically sick or disabled elderly people in increasingly longer economically unproductive retirements, who need consequentially increasing numbers of younger people to support them. 

Rather than simply equating population policy with family planning, the new thinking is that population growth should be stabilized - and development enhanced - by attacking some of the roots of the problem: by improving women's access to education, health care, and economic and political decisions.

The nurses have opportunity to educate family members, friends, and neighbors in the community like church, and also clients (women and their partners) in health-care facilities about different choices of reproduction and referring them to proper clinics or health-care providers.