Posted by Nancy Hepp in Uncategorized.
Tags: breast cancer, cancer, diabetes, Dr. Ted Schettler, ecological paradigm of health, nutrition, obesity, Parkinson's disease, pesticides
Yes! Magazine’s Fall 2012 issue features an interview with Dr. Ted Schettler, CHE’s science director:
Talking with Dr. Ted Schettler is probably unlike any conversation you have had with your physician. Raise the topic of breast cancer or diabetes or dementia, and Schettler starts talking about income disparities, industrial farming, and campaign finance reform.
The Harvard-educated physician, frustrated by the limitations of science in combating disease, believes that finding answers to the most persistent medical challenges of our time—conditions that now threaten to overwhelm our health care system—depends on understanding the human body as a system nested within a series of other, larger systems: one’s family and community, environment, culture, and socioeconomic class, all of which affect each other.
Continue reading on the Yes! Magazine website.
Posted by Nancy Hepp in Newsletter introductions.
Tags: breast cancer, cancer, complexity model, nutrition and health, social environment and health
In recognition of CHE’s 10th anniversary, colleagues who have been particularly instrumental to shaping CHE this past decade will be invited to write an introduction. This month’s introduction is by Ted Schettler, MD, MPH, CHE Science Director, Science Director of the Science and Environmental Health Network, and Coordinator of CHE’s Science Working Group.
Beginning a decade ago, CHE formed working groups with interests in specific aspects of environmental health science. Most were organized around health outcomes, since individuals and organizations frequently focus on a specific disease or disorder, often for very personal reasons, and it seemed logical to build on that structure.
Periodically, however, we come up against the limits of our taxonomies. For example, naming the diabetes-obesity spectrum working group was challenging from the beginning-it was once known as the metabolic syndrome working group—because of the common co-occurrence of insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, and lipid abnormalities, not only in individuals but also in populations. Moreover, midlife diabetes and obesity are themselves risk factors for cognitive decline, dementia, and certain kinds of cancer. But, since these conditions are so commonly mixed together, what is the disease? Does our routine use of the International Classification of Diseases coding system hinder our ability to see patterns and identify common environmental threads that create the conditions giving rise to the diseases of our time?
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Posted by Nancy Hepp in Newsletter introductions.
Tags: Camp Lejeune, cancer, Cancun talks, climate change, male breast cancer
Elise Miller, MEd
Director
Camp Lejeune sounds like a lovely place to spend a summer vacation, right? Fishing, swimming, enjoying the great outdoors. Unfortunately, for a number of US Marines and their families based at Camp Lejeune, NC, their experience has been anything but serene. The reason is not due to harsh training conditions, but to exposures to contaminants in the water. In fact, the camp was the site of what is believed to be the largest drinking water chemical contamination event in US. history. For decades, from the 1950s to the mid to late 1980s, the drinking water contained trichloroethylene, tetrachloroethylene, benzene and other chlorinated chemicals from base activities and leaks from a civilian dry cleaning establishment adjacent to the base. Camp Lejeune was officially listed as a Superfund site in 1989. Now more than 65 cases of male breast cancer have been diagnosed of those who served and lived at Camp Lejeune – a very rare cancer that has been associated with exposures to these chemicals. In addition, a significant number of other cancers, neurological disorders, birth defects and related health conditions have been reported by the Marines and their families who lived there during those decades. We know chemical contamination and environmental injustice, as highlighted on other CHE partner calls, often go hand-in-hand. But even people who are supposed to be highly valued by our country-namely, our military veterans – are also discounted or ignored if they suggest their health problems might be linked to chemical exposures on bases in the US or in combat zones abroad. Marines with male breast cancer? Impossible? Think again.
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