The Oracle Preamble
The Oracle Preamble:
We are in a new dawn regarding environmental health in the US and, in fact, globally. The public awareness and interest in all things “green” is creating a huge opening for those of us in nursing who are interested in environmental health. We have moved beyond questioning the science of whether we are in environmental peril to consensus that we are and that we must act and act now on some of the most critical issues.
Nurses, who are one of the most trusted sources of information by the public, must be in a position to both respond to questions about the environment and its relationship to health with credible, evidence-based information, as well as provide leadership in making the necessary changes in our policies and practices to protect and promote human health. To that end we must prepare nurses to be a cut above the average citizen with regard to their knowledge of environmental health issues
In 1995, the National Academy of Science Institute of Medicine noted that health professionals in the U.S. are not provided with environmental health content in their basic education. This enduring shortfall results in missed opportunities for identifying, treating, and preventing environmentally-related diseases. Two key issues persist 13 years after the seminal IOM report: 1) There are few nursing faculty experts in environmental health and 2) There are virtually no programs/resources to help current and prospective faculty to address this deficit.
Approximately 50,000 nursing students graduate every year and enter into practice. We must create an environmental health education strategy for faculty and practicing nurses that insures they will have the requisite skills to incorporate environmental risk questions when taking patients’ histories; they will assess health threats associated with the air and water in their communities and understand the contribution that environmental justice situations have to health disparities; and they will advocate for improvements in environmental protection and the inter-relationship between the environment (air, water, food/agriculture, chemical/products) and human health.
When we start investigating an environmental health risk, we are likely to find no publications in the nursing literature. Although the environmental health science literature is plentiful, this whole realm of science is largely ignored by the greater nursing community and consequently our practice reflects the deficit. The ANA recently adopted an excellent set of Environmental Health Principles, as did the Public Health Nursing Section of the American Public Health Association. It’s time for us to translate these principles into evidence-based nursing practice.
Today, a woman’s lifetime risk of breast cancer is 1 in 8. To the extent that the nations 3,000,000 nurses are representative of the population, we could theoretically anticipate that approximately 375,000 nurses have been or will be diagnosed with breast cancer. When we talk about the carcinogens in our air, water, food, and consumer products, this can quickly become both personal and professional for many nurses. While the Race for the Cure is essential, we need a Race for Prevention in which we focus on eliminating carcinogens from our environments. The profession of nursing was founded on principles of prevention of disease and illness, today’s environmental health challenges demand that we return to that foundation. We have immense power to bring science and passion to the critical environmental health issues at hand.
The era of the internet has given us the opportunity to reach nursing (and other communities) in a way unimaginable a decade ago. Never before have we had such colossal power to inform and mobilize people on such a wide-scale basis and provide virtually instantaneous answers and resources. We will be taking advantage of this powerful tool to create an “e-Commons” for all nurses with an interest in environmental health.
Creating an e-Commons requires a slight shift in our current approach to the web. The site is truly intended not to have single ownership but to be owned by the community of nurses with a focus in environmental health. It will be content-rich with information and links to trustworthy sources from all of us individually and from non-profit organizations, governmental agencies, and academia. It will also use a variety of the newest internet tools for multi-media postings/links, for nurses to co-create materials (using “wiki” programs), as well as using current social networking tools. This e-Commons can also be a place where nurses can see and place meeting announcements, “meet”, share stories, post questions, and collectively guide ourselves, thereby exploiting our immense, collective knowledge and experience for the good of all.
Over the last decade, nurses have begun to work on environmental health. These nurses represent the vanguard in the environmental health nursing movement. However, our efforts have seldom been strategically knit together. We are nursing educators, practitioners, researchers, and nurses who are active in our national and state nurses associations and/or nursing subspecialty organizations. We are gathering in Oracle to deepen our individual and collective commitment to environmental health and to develop a strategic plan for engaging the nursing profession, educating future nurses, incorporating environmental health into our practice, and mobilizing on state and national policy issues. We may also become the core for a national nursing society or network for environmental health nursing by the end of this meeting.
One in every one hundred Americans is a Registered Nurse. We have the power of one and the power of many. The work ahead of us is noble work. And it is urgent work.
