Health and Sustainability: An Introduction

by Tee L. Guidotti

Overview

Health and sustainability have become ubiquitous topics in all realms of popular discourse. What these discussions often overlook is the fact that the two concepts are interrelated, and that their surrounding policies and practices can often inform and reinforce each other. As sustainability measures are already in place across many levels of government, there is now an opportunity to extend these principles to improve health care and health care policy.

Health and Sustainability: An Introduction details how the values of sustainability can be applied to the design of health systems and the delivery of primary care. By providing a practical framework for understanding complicated sustainability problems related to health, the book offers an authoritative resource for understanding:

- health and environmental rights
- parallels between human toxicology and ecotoxicology
- how health promotion strategy can be a template for sustainability
- health science and how it can be used to support decisions in health and sustainability
- how scientific knowledge is achieved, understood, accepted, and used in health and environmental advocacy, and how this relates to sustainability

Students and practitioners in health will benefit from this introduction to sustainability, and those in sustainability and environmental studies will benefit from this application to human health. Health and Sustainability offers a roadmap for successfully integrating these approaches for healthier people and environment.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199325337
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	03/27/2015
Pages:	512
Product dimensions:	9.10(w) x 6.10(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Dr. Tee L. Guidotti is a physician specializing in pulmonary medicine and in occupational and environmental medicine, trained at Johns Hopkins. He had a long academic career devoted to public health, environmental and occupational health, and the relationship between ecosystem integrity and human health, mostly at the University of Alberta (Canada) and George Washington University (USA). He is currently an international consultant working through Medical Advisory Services, a small firm with offices in Rockville, Maryland, where his work convinced him that the unifying framework for what he was doing was sustainability. In 2015, he is on leave of absence as a Fulbright Visiting Chair at the University of Ottawa, in the Institute for Science, Society, and Policy. He is President-Elect of Sigma Xi, the international honor society for scientific research.

Table of Contents

Foreword on Health
Foreword on Sustainability
Preface

Chapter 1
Health and Sustainability

Chapter 2
Ways of Knowing

Chapter 3
Catastrophic Failure

Chapter 4
Pollution and Contamination

Chapter 5
Chemical Pollution and Health

Chapter 6
Ecosystem Change and Infectious Disease

Chapter 7
Socially-Mediated Issues

Chapter 8
Ecosystem Services and Health

Chapter 9
Artificial Ecosystems

Chapter 10
Energy

Chapter 11
Culture and Rights

Chapter 12
Spirituality and Sustainability

Chapter 13
The Professionalization of Sustainability


Selected Sources
Index

Editorial Reviews

Reviewer: John T. Pierce, MBBS (MD) PhD(Navy Environmental Health Center)
Description: As stated on the cover, this book details how science and values of sustainability can be applied to health protection and population health. The inherent juxtaposition continues in the book's pivoting dialogue addressing health and environmental rights, human and ecotoxicology, promotion strategies and sustainability, health science and policy decision making.
Purpose: A fair portion of the book is devoted to expanded definitions of important concepts. As an example, the energy chapter offers a concise discussion of both conventional and unconventional natural gas, the latter produced by hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. He explains that the concept of sustainability is relatively new while we all know that the concept of health is old.
Audience: The audience includes a variety of public health workers as well as engineering and medical professionals. I believe a readership will emerge among decision-makers and scientists.
Features: Chapters cover health and sustainability, ways of knowing, catastrophic failure, pollution and contamination, chemical pollution and health, ecosystem change and infectious disease, socially mediated issues, ecosystem service and health, artificial ecosystems, energy, culture and rights, spirituality and sustainability, and the professionalism of sustainability. Readers more conversant with social theory or perhaps even hard science will likely be significantly challenged by the interplay that occurs.
Assessment: In the book's selected sources and index sections I found names of those whom I believe have paved our way forward (Barry Commoner, David Brower, Paul Ehrlich, and TL Friedman, among others). This book may be Professor's Guidotti's opus given that it sums up and extends his eclectic and significant contributions over many years. This is a very useful reference.

Doody's Review Service

"Most of today's references to 'sustainable practices' underrepresent the true depth of the global problems we face. Tee Guidotti's new book gets serious about sustainability, defining it as simply 'balancing what is taken and what is given.' What comes into focus is how sustainability and health are forever linked, and that substantive change is needed before global health is irrevocably affected." — William Leiss, PhD, McLaughlin Centre for Population Health Risk Assessment, University of Ottawa

"A timely book. The task of recharting a course to a sustainable future is great, urgent, and formidable. A clear understanding of the 'health and sustainability' relationship - and in particular that attaining environmental and social sustainability has enormous consequences for human wellbeing, happiness, health and survival - is essential." — Anthony J. McMichael, from the foreword

"This book may be Professor's Guidotti's opus given that it sums up and extends his eclectic and significant contributions over many years. This is a very useful reference." —DOODY'S

"An ambitious look between topics typically examined separately, Health and Sustainability discusses how progress in these two areas is mutually dependent. Providing thoughtful ideas to those versed in health, sustainability, or both, it can serve well as an introduction into each of these topics." -Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences

From the Publisher