Health Care Provider Initiative

Goal: Incorporate environmental health into health professionals' education and practice in order to improve health care and public health, with a special emphasis on protecting children and other populations disproportionately affected by environmental pollutants.

Full Report: Health Care Provider Initiative Strategic Plan (PDF, 217KB)

Although environmental health risks can be leading causes of illness and death, the average health professional receives minimal environmental training. Even when environmental factors are identified as a source of a health problem there is often little knowledge about how to address or prevent the problem.
75% of medical schools require only about seven hours of study in environmental medicine over four years.⁽¹⁾
The Institute of Medicine issued recommendations to integrate environmental health education into medical and nursing professions.^(2,3)

Program Objectives:

Incorporation of environmental health into the educational institutions that train doctors, nurses and other primary health care providers.
Continuing education requirements address environmental health so that practitioners are evaluated on endorsed environmental health practice skills.
Use of tools by practicing doctors, nurses and other primary health care providers to help address environmental risks of the populations they serve.
Improvements in people's health by preventing exposures to environmental pollutants.
Improved coordination between health organizations and groups (e.g. hospitals, public health departments, community clinics, office practices, managed care organizations).
Facilitating more effective health care spending through prevention.

Sources:

1 Schenk M, Popp SM, Neale AV, Demers RY. Environmental Medicine Content in Medical School Curricula. Academic Medicine. 1996 May;71(5):499-501.
2 Pope AM, Snyder MA, Mood LH, eds. Nursing, Health & the Environment, Institute of Medicine Report. Washington, DC: National Academy Press; 1995.
3 Institute of Medicine. Division of Health Promotion and Disease Prevention. Role of the Primary Care Physician in Occupational and Environmental Medicine. National Academy Press. Washington DC, 1988.