Frameworks for understanding environmental impacts on health and their relationship to development
Recommended by Dr. Jennifer Holdaway
1. Briggs, David J. (2008).
A framework for integrated environmental health impactassessment of systemic risks.
Environmental Health. 7:61.
This article provides a good introduction to different types of environmental health risk assessment, reviewing traditional risk assessment approaches that focused on particular chemicals as well as the challenges involved in developing more integrated approaches suitable for the governance of complex, multi-causal and non-linear systemic risks. The references provide a comprehensive list of further reading mostly from US and European literature.
Source: http://www.ehjournal.net/content/7/1/61
2. Carlos F. Corvalán, Tord Kjellström, and Kirk R. Smith. (1999).
Health, Environment and Sustainable Development. Identifying Links and Indicators to Promote Action.
Epidemiology. September 1999, Vol. 10, No. 5.
This article introduces the Driver Response State Exposure Effect
Action (DPSEEA) model.
Source: http://www.who.int/quantifying_ehimpacts/methods/en/corvalan.pdf
3. Cairncross S, O’Neill D, McCoy A and Sethi D. (2003).
Health, Environment and the Burden of Disease: A Guidance Note.
London: DFID.
This paper discusses the role of environment in burden of disease and implications for poverty.
Van Schirding, Yasmin. “Health in Sustainable Development Planning: the role of indicators”. Geneva. WHO 2002.
Chapter 7 deals specifically with linkages related to pollution and expands on the DP. Huynen Maud MTE, Pim Martens, and Henk BM Hilderink. 2005.
Sources:
http://docs.watsan.net/Downloaded_Files/PDF/Cairncross-2003-Health.pdf
http://www.who.int/wssd/resources/indicators/en/.
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/events/IndicatorsChapter7.pdf
4. The health impacts of globalisation: a conceptual framework. Globalization and Health.
The article considers the social-cultural, economic, environmental and institutional factors that shape population health and the different levels of causality at which they operate: proximal, distal, and intermediary, as well as the contextual macro level conditions shaping the distal and proximal health determinants. It discusses the dynamic relations among these various factors and dimensions.
Source: http://www.globalizationandhealth.com/content/1/1/14
5. United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Regional Office for
Latin America and the Caribbean and the Pan-American Health. (2009).
GEOHealth: Methodology for Integrated Environment and Health Assessment. A Focus on Latin America and the Carribean.
This provides a useful summary of approaches to environment and health linkages and their advantages and disadvantages and includes an application of the GEO Health model to Brazil. Hypothetical application of the framework to heavy metal pollution.
Source: http://www.unep.org/ieacp/files/pdf/Health/GEO-Health-English.pdf
6. World Health Organization (2005).
Ecosystems and human well-being: health synthesis: a report of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
This paper analyzes the way in which changes in and degradation of ecosystems affect health and well-being, including analysis of drivers and implications for MDGs.
Sources:
http://www.maweb.org/documents/document.357.aspx.pdf
http://www.maweb.org/documents/MA_health-Chinese.pdf
7. Gilles Forget and Jean Lebel. (2001).
An EcoSystem Approach to Human Health. International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health.
Supplement to Vol 7. Number 2. April/June 2001.
This paper lays out the evolution and key characteristics of the EcoHealth approach sponsored by the Canadian International Development Research Centre, with some examples of its application.
Source: http://www.unites.uqam.ca/neuro/design/Documents/Forget_Lebel_Ecosystem.pdf
8. ICSU (2011).
Report of the ICSU Planning Group on Health and Wellbeing in the Changing Urban Environment: a Systems Analysis Approach.
International Council for Science, Paris.
This report provides an analytical framework for understanding the factors shaping health in changing urban settings. It emphasizes systems analysis and formal modeling and provides a framework that includes a wide range of distal and proximal factors. Examples relate to urban transportation, vector borne diseases, and health financing and inequality.
Source:
9. Kirk Smith and Majid Ezzati. (2005).
How Environmental Health Risks Change with Development: the Epidemiologic and Environmental Risk Transitions Revisited
Annual Review of Environmental Resources. 30:291–333.
This article discusses the way in which the environmental burden of disease due to household, community and global risk factors changes at different levels of development. It uses the Global Burden of Disease database to re-examine the traditional model of the epidemiological transition which held that infectious diseases decline and chronic diseases increased with the transition from poor to rich country status. The authors find that chronic diseases do increase as a proportion of the burden of disease in rich countries due to population ageing, but that the overall mortality rate from all diseases is still lower in richer countries. In analyzing the changes in the risk factors of disease they find that environmental risk factors are predominantly household level in poor countries, community level in middle income countries, and global in rich countries, though not all regions show consistent relationships. The article provides very useful summaries and references to the literature on the demographic, epidemiological and risk transitions.
Source: http://ehs.sph.berkeley.edu/krsmith/publications/ARER.pdf
