The 2021 federal budget committed funding to a co-sponsored Statistics Canada and Environment and Climate Change Canada initiative aimed at conducting a 'census' of Canadian environments. The goal of the Census of Environment (CoE) is "to deliver a full picture of the complex relationship between ecosystems and the economy, society, and human well-being", with obvious implications for the ongoing monitoring and surveillance of environmental influence on human health. This commentary reflects on the evolution of the CoE initiative in describing two opportunities for population and public health researchers, practitioners, and policy-makers in engaging with the CoE and its data.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOver the past decade, British Columbia, Canada's westernmost province, has begun developing liquified natural gas (LNG) mega projects that can transport Canadian resources to foreign markets across the Pacific region. These projects have gained significant profile due to high-level debates over their environmental, social and economic impacts. While LNG projects are required to undergo environmental impact assessment procedures, there is growing recognition of the need to ensure that positive social, economic and environmental impacts are fairly distributed to local communities.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInt J Environ Res Public Health
September 2022
(1) Objectives: Cumulative impacts refer to the legacies of land use decisions on environmental, community and health values. New integrative impact assessment tools are required to assess cumulative impacts on diverse values to meet sustainability goals in the 21st century. In this contribution, the CalEnviroScreen methodology-a screening tool capable of merging environmental, socioeconomic and health data-is applied to Local Health Areas in British Columbia, Canada.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAccelerating ecological and societal changes require re-imagining the role of primary care and public health to address eco-social concerns in rural and remote places. In this narrative review, we searched literatures on: community-oriented primary care, patient-oriented research engagement, public health and primary care synergies, and primary care addressing social determinants of health. Our analysis was guided by questions oriented to utility for addressing concerns of social-ecological systems in rural, remote contexts characterized by a high degree of reliance on resource extraction and development (e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIncreasingly, protocols for assessing the impacts of land-uses and major resource development projects focus not only on environmental impacts, but also social and human health impacts. Regional and Strategic Environmental Assessment (RSEAs) are one innovation that hold promise at better integrating these diverse land-use values into planning, assessment, and decision-making. In this contribution, a realist review methodology is utilized to identify case studies of "integrated RSEA"-those which are strategic, have a regional assessment approach, and seek to integrate environmental, community and health impacts into a singular assessment architecture.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Epidemiol Community Health
October 2020
Can J Public Health
December 2018
Climate change is increasingly impacting population health outcomes related to several areas of public health service delivery across Canada, and internationally. As a result, public health practitioners are increasingly looking for guidance on how to begin planning for and adapting to a myriad of health-related climate impacts. This paper outlines several benefits for local or regional health agencies in conducting climate change and health vulnerability assessments (CCHVAs), based on the author's experience in conducting two of Canada's first comprehensive assessments.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: As global environmental change drives inequitable health outcomes, novel health equity assessment methodologies are increasingly required. We review literatures on equity-focused HIA to clarify how equity is informing HIA practice, and to surface innovations for assessing health equity in relation to a range of exposures across geographic and temporal scales.
Methods: A narrative review of the health equity and HIA literatures analysed English articles published between 2003 and 2017 across PubMed, PubMed Central, Biomed Central and Ovid Medline.
Accelerated changes to the planet have created novel spaces to re-imagine the boundaries and foci of environmental health research. Climate change, mass species extinction, ocean acidification, biogeochemical disturbance, and other emergent environmental issues have precipitated new population health perspectives, including, but not limited to, one health, ecohealth, and planetary health. These perspectives, while nuanced, all attempt to reconcile broad global challenges with localized health impacts by attending to the reciprocal relationships between the health of ecosystems, animals, and humans.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe impacts of global environmental change have precipitated numerous approaches that connect the health of ecosystems, non-human organisms and humans. However, the proliferation of approaches can lead to confusion due to overlaps in terminology, ideas and foci. Recognising the need for clarity, this paper provides a guide to seven field developments in environmental public health research and practice: occupational and environmental health; political ecology of health; environmental justice; ecohealth; One Health; ecological public health; and planetary health.
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