564 - How to Be a Climate Change Advocate: Howard Frumkin on How Environmental Health = Our Health, and Why There's Empirical Evidence For Hope
Public Health On Call
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
4.6 • 644 Ratings
🗓️ 23 January 2023
⏱️ 22 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Environmental health wasn't always part of the public health portfolio but in recent years "science caught up to the obvious." Dr. Howard Frumkin, former head of Environmental Health Operations at the CDC and currently senior vice president at Trust for Public Land, talks with Shelley Hearne about the evidence base behind environmental impacts on our health, the political and cultural changes required for the CDC to adopt programs around climate and environment, and why hope for tackling climate change is not only a worthy strategy, there's empirical evidence behind it.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, |
| 0:05.9 | where we bring evidence, experience, and perspective to make sense of today's leading health challenges. |
| 0:16.3 | If you have questions or ideas for us, please send an email to public health question at jh.h.edu. |
| 0:23.8 | That's public health question at jh.u.edu for future podcast episodes. |
| 0:31.8 | Hi, I'm Lindsay Smith-Rogers, producer, Public Health On Call. |
| 0:35.3 | Today, guest host, Shelley Hearn, director of the Learner Center for Public Health Advocacy, speaks with Dr. Howard Frumpkin, former head of environmental health operations at the CDC, and currently senior vice president at Trust for Public Land. They discuss reasons why health, environment, and climate are all intertwined, and Frumkin's advocacy in getting |
| 0:55.7 | this on the public health agenda. They also talk about the empirical evidence that there are |
| 1:00.3 | reasons to be hopeful about what's being done to address climate change in the public and private |
| 1:05.6 | sectors. Let's listen. Howie, it is so good to have you here on this podcast, and I've been thinking about all the |
| 1:14.3 | ways I could introduce you. |
| 1:16.0 | You have been an amazing leader in so many different spots. |
| 1:20.2 | You've been CDC's environmental health operations head. |
| 1:25.2 | You've been the dean of a public health school. |
| 1:27.2 | He headed up the climate program for one of the |
| 1:30.0 | world's largest health philanthropies. So how do I like give it in a nutshell to the listeners, |
| 1:37.7 | who you are? And as I think about it, you're the guy who was ahead of the curve way before the rest of us. You had the evidence, |
| 1:47.4 | and you were the one who said, it actually is healthy to hug a tree. You're the healthy tree hugger |
| 1:53.6 | guy. But thanks, Shelley. I appreciate those kind words. Like most of the insights I've had in my life, that one is only about 5,000 years old, and I can't take a lot of credit for it. |
| 2:06.9 | What I did try to do was pull together evidence to support various approaches to healthy habitats in which people can thrive. |
| 2:15.4 | And sure enough, as you said, nature contact is one element of those healthy habitats. |
| 2:21.0 | All right. |
| 2:21.2 | So science finally caught up to what you will describe as the obvious. |
... |
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