Collaborative on Health and the Environment -- eNewsletter : October 2006

Contents:

 CHE Partnership Call Announcement - October 31
 CHE Working and Regional Group Updates
 Tools, Announcements and Resources for CHE Partners
 CHE Science News Headlines
 New CHE Partners
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Dear CHE Partners and Friends:

Here at CHE central we are in the last semi-frenzied preparations for our conference, Environmental Public Health: Science, Medicine, Prevention And Policy, on Friday. We look forward to seeing those of you who are planning to attend. If you have not yet registered and are interested in attending the conference, a few spaces are still available. Please contact Frieda Nixdorf at: Frieda@HealthandEnvironment.org for registration information. It promises to be a most fascinating day of presentations. And San Francisco is at it's most beautiful right now, as we hoped and planned....

Beyond that, note that our CHE National Partnership call this month focuses on male reproductive health, a subject not often discussed in many mainstream arenas. I also encourage you to take a look at the CHE home page for a new feature titled "Chemical Contamination in Fenceline Communities", the first in a series of stories by Commonweal's Steve Lerner.

There's much more news - both good and bad - and opportunities to join in CHE activities. We hope to see and or hear from you on one of our calls, at one of our conferences, or via one of our working groups as you best see fit.

Steve Heilig, Director of Pubic Health and Education, CHE


CHE Partnership Call Announcement - October 31

Announcing the next CHE National Partnership Call -- Male Reproductive Health at Risk: Testicular Dysgenesis and the Environment -- scheduled for Tuesday, October 31 at 10am Pacific / 1pm Eastern time. This teleconference will be a discussion on the relationship between environmental exposures and Testicular Dysgenesis Syndrome, a term for a collection of disorders that arise from problems during fetal development of the testes and has been linked to lowered sperm quality, undescended testicles, hypospadias, and testicular cancer.

Steve Heilig, MPH, Director of Public Health & Education, San Francisco Medical Society and CHE, will moderate this call. We will have featured presentations from:
  • Earl Gray, PhD, Professor, Endocrinology Branch, US Environmental Protection Agency, Reproductive Toxicology Division,
  • Pete Myers, PhD, CEO, Environmental Health Sciences,
  • Niels Skakkebaek, MD, DrMSc, Professor, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and
  • Shanna Swan, PhD, Professor, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, University of Rochester, School of Medicine and Dentistry.
Please RSVP to Julia Varshavsky Julia@HealthandEnvironment.org to receive call details and information.
CHE Working and Regional Group Updates

CHE's Working Group on Electromagnetic Fields (CHE EMF) ~ Coordinated by Nancy Evans, Health Science Consultant, Nancywrite@aol.com and Cindy Sage, Sage Associates Environmental Consultants, sage@silcom.com

A consensus statement on electromagnetic radiation has been released by the CHE-EMF Working Group, outlining health concerns regarding exposure to EMR, particularly radiofrequency radiation from the proliferation of wireless technologies such as cellular phones, cordless phones, cellular towers/antennas, and WI-FI networks. The statement identifies precautionary measures that people can take to reduce or eliminate exposure to these technologies. It also calls for increased research on the health/biological effects of wireless technologies, and urges caution in the further deployment of these technologies. Signatories include international researchers in electromagnetic radiation as well as a number of CHE-EMF Working Group participants. Other CHE Partners are invited to sign on to the statement by e-mailing Frieda Nixdorf at: frieda@healthandenvironment.org.


CHE Initiates Next Steps on Women’s Health and the Environment Collaboration

Momentum continues to build within CHE and with colleague organizations for collective work on the connections between women’s health and the environment. Building on the success of CHE’s Fertility/Early Pregnancy Compromise, Breast Cancer, and Women’s Health and Environment Working Groups, CHE convened a group of leaders in September 2006 who are working at the nexus of women’s health and environment. The meeting demonstrated that there is great interest in engaging women across the country, the public more generally, and policy makers to advocate for decisions that improve the lives of women.

The meeting produced several areas of common ground, including to:
  • Map the network of who is doing what at the nexus of women's health and the environment;
  • Build a social network between organizations in ways that raise all boats and centralize joint projects such as commissioning of polls, language translation and shared media;
  • Implement collective outreach projects to expand the base of women by developing materials to fill the gaps, using new technology, enabling storytelling, and offering policy platforms;
  • Develop a web portal to bring together some of the best available resources on women’s health for the general public and provide people and communities concerned about their health, with the latest science, educational tools, and policy opportunities.
If you would like more information about the meeting or the developing activities, please contact Susan West Marmagas at: susan@healthandenvironment.org.


CHE Co-Sponsors Environmental Health Conference in Europe - November 9

CHE, along with co-sponsors the Health and Environment Alliance and the Association for Research and Treatments Against Cancer (ARTAC) are co-hosting a conference in Paris titled "Environment and Sustainable Health: An International Assessment." For more information about this meeting, please visit: http://www.healthandenvironment.org/articles/che-events/739.


CHE's Cancer Working Group (CHE Cancer) ~ Coordinated by Michael Lerner, PhD, President, Commonweal and Susan West Marmagas, MPH, Director of Health Programs, Collaborative on Health and the Environment, Susan@HealthandEnvironment.org

CHE Cancer has two upcoming conference calls. Please hold the date for the following calls.

1) The next CHE Cancer Quarterly Call, will take place on Wednesday, November 29 at 10am Pacific / 1pm Eastern time.

2) A joint CHE Fertility / CHE Cancer Call will take place on Thursday, December 7 at 11am Pacific / 2pm Eastern time. Joining us for this call will be Gail S. Prins, Professor of Physiology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Dr. Cheryl L. Walker from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Dr. Donna Baird, from NIEHS, Michael Lerner, President, Commonweal, and Dr. Pete Myers, CEO of Environmental Health Sciences.

If you are interested in joining either of these calls, please contact Julia Varshavsky, at: Julia@HealthandEnvironment.org.


CHE Fertility/Early Pregnancy Compromise Working Group (CHE Fertility) ~ Coordinated by CHE Partner and Research Fellow Alison Carlson, Alison@HealthandEnvironment.org

At the January 2007 UCSF-CHE Summit on Environmental Challenges to Reproductive Health and Fertility, preeminent researchers will present overviews of the science on environmental contaminant impacts on male and female reproductive health and fertility/pregnancy. Multidisciplinary stakeholders will discuss in plenary, concurrent and break-out sessions the implications of the science presented, and how best to translate the research for the clinic, wider public health and policy, and disease prevention. Be part of this ground-breaking meeting. Program and registration information is available at: http://www.ucsf.edu/coe/prhesummit.html. Space is limited; early registration recommended.

We are delighted to offer four trainee support awards to attend. See: http://ucsf.edu/coe/prhesummit.html for application guidelines. We urge you to forward those guidelines to any trainee candidates you think might be interested.

Note that we have issued a Call for Poster Presentation Abstracts (in science, community, policy and advocacy categories). Submission deadline is late October. Visit the Summit webpage to download the call for abstracts.

Quite a number of CHE Fertility Participants will head to New Orleans for the 2006 annual meeting of the American Society of Reproductive Medicine, where we are staging our third consecutive meeting of the Environment and Reproduction Special Interest Group-in-formation (ERSIG). Any CHE National Partners attending ASRM 2006 are enthusiastically welcomed at the ERSIG meeting on Oct 24.

Don't forget to check CHE Fertility’s new online library of environment and fertility related scientific abstracts and news stories, created in concert with www.EnvironmentalHealthNews.org. You can find easy links at: http://www.healthandenvironment.org/working_groups/fertility.
Tools, Announcements and Resources for CHE Partners

New Environmental Health Website and Tools Available for Pediatric Health Care Providers
The National Environmental Education and Training Foundation (NEETF) has launch a new website and environmental health training tools for pediatric health care providers. The site was developed as part of the Children’s Environmental Health Faculty Champions Initiative, which aims to build health professionals’ capacity to address children’s environmental health issues. The website can be seen at: http://www.neetf.org/health/champions.


Pediatric Environmental Health Toolkit Training: Clinical Applications for the Busy Pediatric and Family Practice -- Nov 18, Minneapolis, MN
This half-day training program will introduce participants to a new clinical resource for practitioners, the Pediatric Environmental Health Toolkit. The Toolkit, endorsed by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), was developed partially in response to the frequent requests by pediatricians for practical, clinical tools that enable providers to incorporate environmental health guidance into everyday practice. It includes materials for both providers and patients on preventing exposures to toxic chemicals and other substances that may affect child health. For more information, contact Kathleen Schuler at: kschuler@iatp.org, or register at: www.iatp.org.


The Encyclopedia of Earth
The Encyclopedia of Earth is the first element of the Earth Portal - an initiative to create a free, web-based environmental information resource that combines the trustworthiness and authority of scientific review and governance with the power of web-based collaboration. The Earth Portal will be a direct conduit of objective information from scientists and educators to decision makers and society at large. The website can be seen at: http://www.eoearth.org.


Newly Enhanced and Updated CHE Toxicants and Disease Database
The newly enhanced and updated CHE Toxicants and Disease Database, a scientifically based, web-interactive database summarizing the evidence of exposure to chemical contaminants and over 180 associated human diseases or conditions, is available on the CHE website, at: http://database.healthandenvironment.org. We also have a spreadsheet version available in printed format or as an electronic file. For more information, please contact Eleni Sotos, CHE National Coordinator, at: Eleni@HealthandEnvironment.org.


New CHE Brochure
We are also pleased to announce our new CHE brochure. If you would like copies of the brochure, please contact Frieda Nixdorf, CHE Administrative Specialist, at: Frieda@HealthandEnvironment.org.
CHE Science News Headlines


Above the Fold is an indispensable daily email summary of environmental health science news. Published by Pete Myers, a co-founder of CHE and CEO of Environmental Health News, our Environmental Health Science Information Partner, Above the Fold is internationally regarded as THE best daily summary of environmental health news. We encourage every CHE Partner who wants to understand the field to subscribe to ATF. You can also add an RSS feed to your website specialized for your specific interests, so the latest environmental health science information focused on your specific issues and interests appears on your website every day.
New CHE Partners

We welcome the many new CHE Partners who have joined since the last newsletter. To see the New CHE Partners and the growing list of all CHE Partners, please visit: http://www.healthandenvironment.org/base/partners-recent.

New CHE Logo
Thank you for taking the time to read the latest about CHE. As always, we welcome your feedback, suggestions or questions. Please direct them to Eleni Sotos, CHE National Coordinator, at: Eleni@HealthandEnvironment.org.

Best wishes,
Eleni Sotos, National Coordinator
and
Frieda Nixdorf, Administrative Specialist
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