Rebuilding Caribbean Environmental Health Post-Crisis Programs: A Preliminary Study for Virtual Mentorship.

After the hurricanes in 2017 in the U.S. Caribbean, it was essential to rebuild, strengthen, and sustain essential environmental health (EH) services and systems.

Identifying Needs for Advancing the Profession and Workforce in Environmental Health.

An ever-changing landscape for environmental health (EH) requires in-depth assessment and analysis of the current challenges and emerging issues faced by EH professionals. The Understanding the Needs, Challenges, Opportunities, Vision, and Emerging Roles in Environmental Health initiative addressed this need.After receiving responses from more than 1700 practitioners, during an in-person workshop, focus groups identified and described priority problems and supplied context on addressing the significant challenges facing EH professionals with state health agencies and local health departments.

Uncovering Environmental Health: An Initial Assessment of the Profession's Health Department Workforce and Practice.

Environmental health (EH) professionals provide critical services and respond to complex and multifaceted public health threats. The role of these professionals is continually re-emphasized by emergencies requiring rapid and effective responses to address environmental issues and ensure protection of the public's health. Given the prominence of the EH profession within the public health framework, assessing the governmental health department workforce, practice, and current and future challenges is crucial to ensure EH professionals are fully equipped and prepared to protect the nation's health.

Environmental Health Practice Challenges and Research Needs for U.S. Health Departments.

Background: Environmental health (EH) professionals, one of the largest segments of the public health workforce, are responsible for delivery of essential environmental public health services. The challenges facing these professionals and research needs to improve EH practice are not fully understood, but 26% of EH professionals working in health departments of the United States plan to retire in 5 y, while only 6% of public health students are currently pursuing EH concentrations.

Objectives: A groundbreaking initiative was recently launched to understand EH practice in health departments of the United States.

Developmental integration of feather growth and pigmentation and its implications for the evolution of diet-derived coloration.

Variation in avian coloration is produced by coordinated pigmentation of thousands of growing feathers that vary in shape and size. Although the functional consequences of avian coloration are frequently studied, little is known about its developmental basis, and, specifically, the rules that link feather growth to pigment uptake and synthesis. Here, we combine biochemical, modeling, and morphometric techniques to examine the developmental basis of feather pigmentation in house finches (Carpodacus mexicanus)--a species with extensive variation in both growth dynamics of ornamental feathers and their carotenoid pigmentation.

Developmental evolution of sexual ornamentation: model and a test of feather growth and pigmentation.

A tremendous diversity of avian color displays has stimulated numerous studies of natural and sexual selection. Yet, the developmental mechanisms that produce such diversification, and thus the proximate targets of selection pressures, are rarely addressed and poorly understood. In particular, because feathers are colored during growth, the dynamics of feather growth play a deterministic role in the variation in ornamentation.