Public Health Conference to Focus on Environmental Health

Madison, Wisconsin - What are the health threats of pesticides, radiation, fish consumption, coal burning and crude oil refining? How do some foods impact the health of Wisconsin children, and how does prenatal exposure to environmental contaminants affect prenatal development?

The answers to these questions and others will become clear at an international conference on environmental health to be held on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus Feb. 18-20, 2011.

"Making the Connection 2011: Translating Environmental Health Research into Clinical Practice and Prevention" will take place in the Microbial Sciences Building, 1550 Linden Drive. Some 200 attendees are expected.

"This conference is designed to give health care professionals the latest information on environmental health research so that they can use that information in their practices to better diagnose, treat and prevent related health problems in their patients," says Dr. Monica Vohmann, one of the organizers from the Wisconsin chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR). "Workshops will also address policy-related issues as well as the role health professionals can play in public health advocacy."

PSR Wisconsin, along with the UW School of Medicine and Public Health (SMPH) and several other organizations, are co-sponsors.

Keynote and plenary sessions will feature experts such as Dr. Ruth Etzel, a senior officer for environmental health research at the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, who will speak on the interaction of nutrition, microbes and environment. Etzel will also lead a hands-on exercise on understanding how asthma clusters form, and how to prevent them in the future.

Dr. Ted Schettler of the Collaborative on Health and Environment in Michigan will present an "eco-social" model of health, focusing on endocrine disruptors and the interaction of genes and environmental exposures, and how to take and use an environmental health history.

Dr. Jonathan Patz of the Department of Population Health Sciences at the School of Medicine and Public Health, will talk about the health effects of climate change as well as the potential health benefits of reducing fossil fuel consumption.

The keynote address will be by Wilma Subra, a chemist and environmental activist from Louisiana, who will speak about the physical and mental health impacts of the BP Deepwater Horizon crude oil disaster.