Katrina Smith Korfmacher - Bridging Silos: Collaborating for Environmental Health and Justice in Urban Communities

Urban and Industrial Environments

Series editor: Robert Gottlieb, Henry R. Luce Professor of Urban and Environmental Policy, Occidental College

For a complete list of books published in this series, please see the back of the book.

Bridging Silos

Collaborating for Environmental Health and Justice in Urban Communities

Katrina Smith Korfmacher

The MIT Press

Cambridge, Massachusetts

London, England

2019 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

This work is subject to a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND license.

Subject to such license, all rights are reserved.

The open access edition of this book was made possible by generous funding from the MIT Libraries.

This book was set in Stone Serif and Stone Sans by Westchester Publishing Services.

Printed and bound in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Korfmacher, Katrina Smith, author.

Title: Bridging silos : collaborating for environmental health and justice in urban communities / Katrina Smith Korfmacher.

Other titles: Urban and industrial environments.

Description: Cambridge, MA : The MIT Press, [2019] | Series: Urban and industrial environments | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018059481 | ISBN 9780262537568 (pbk. : alk. paper)

Subjects: | MESH: Urban Health | Environmental Health | Built Environment | Urban Population | Urban Health Services--organization & administration | Health Equity | United States

Classification: LCC RA566.7 | NLM WA 380 | DDC 362.1/042--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018059481

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To Karl

Contents

List of Figures

Case study locations

(Map credit: Karl Korfmacher)

Deaths Dispensary: 1866 cartoon linking cholera and contaminated water pumps.

Source: George John Pinwell illustration, Fun, August 18, 1866.

The broad determinants of health

Source: G. Dahlgren and M. Whitehead. 1991. Policies and Strategies to Promote Social Equity in Health (Stockholm, Sweden: Institute for Futures Studies).

Health Impact Pyramid

Source: Thomas R. Friedan. 2010. A Framework for Public Health Action: The Health Impact Pyramid. American Journal of Public Health 100 (4): 509595.

How the environment impacts our health

Source: http://www.who.int/quantifying_ehimpacts/publications/PHE-prevention-diseases-infographic-EN.pdf?ua=1 .

The Local Environmental Health Initiative Framework

Source: Adapted from Koontz et al. (2004) Collaborative Environmental Management: What Roles for Government?

Rates of tested children found to have elevated blood lead levels in Rochester, New York, in 2000

Data source: Sarah Boyce and Kim Hood. 2002. Lead Poisoning among Young Children in Monroe County, NY: A Needs Assessment, Projection Model, and Next Steps (Rochester, NY: Center for Governmental Research). (Map credit: Karl Korfmacher)

Number of tested children and percentage of tested children with elevated blood lead levels in Rochester, New York, 20002016 (includes tested children living in zip codes approximating the Rochester municipal boundary)

Data source: Monroe County Department of Public Health, 2018. Blood Lead Screening Data, 20032016,

https://www2.monroecounty.gov/files/health/Lead/2016%20FINAL%20Screening%20Totals.pdf.

Map of Duluth neighborhoods where health assessments were conducted

Map credit: Richard Bunten

Map of Southern California ports region and locations of THE Impact Project partners

Map credit: Karl Korfmacher

Map of I-710 corridor

Map credit: Karl Korfmacher

List of Tables

Case study characteristics

Applying the Local Environmental Health Initiative Framework

Rochester Coalition to Prevent Lead Poisoning timeline

Coalition to Prevent Lead Poisoning membership*

CPLP and the Local Environmental Health Initiative Framework

Healthy Duluth timeline

Healthy Duluth and the Local Environmental Health Initiative Framework

THE Impact Project partners

Timeline of THE Impact Project engagement in goods movement decisions

THE Impact Project and the Local Environmental Health Initiative Framework

Summary of resources for collaboration

Contributions of human resources from different sectors

Impacts on policies, systems and environments

List of Boxes

Defining Public Health

Defining Environmental Health

What Are Health Inequities?

Healthy People 2020

Health Determinants in Healthy People 2020

The Integration of Environmental Health and Public Health Practice

A Renewed Call for Primary Prevention

Guiding Principles of the Coalition to Prevent Lead Poisoning

Foreword

The fifty American states have been termed laboratories of democracy, places where people and communities can test and refine imaginative new laws and policies far from Washington and free of the political pressures and compromises that too often impede innovation on the national scale.

Innovation at the state and local levels is especially important in times of federal retrenchment when agencies of the national government choose not to promote public health, protect the environment, increase access to health care, or advance the common good. In these circumstances, local action can protect vulnerable populations against the consequences of ill-informed federal policy. Also local experiments can assess the feasibility of unconventional strategies and, when these strategies are found to work, pave the way for their later widescale adoption. Recent examples include Massachusetts path-breaking creation of a universal health insurance program, a plan that became the model for the Affordable Care Act; Vermonts attempted introduction of a single-payer health care system; and courageous action by Ohio and thirty other states to expand access to Medicaid.

Hazardous environmental exposures such as air pollution, lead, toxic industrial chemicals, and pesticides are powerful determinants of health and disease in the United States, especially among disproportionately exposed minority communities, and these hazards have long been targets of state and local action. Examples of state and local interventions against environmental hazards include Californias enforcement of motor vehicle emission standards much stricter than those of the federal government; New Yorks formation of a unique statewide network of centers of excellence in childrens environmental health; Rhode Islands efforts to sue the manufacturers of lead-based paint; and actions taken by California and other states to ban brominated flame retardants and the neurotoxic insecticide chlorpyrifos.

Successful state and local initiatives in environmental public health require the formation of diverse, multisectoral collaborations whose members typically extend far beyond the usual suspects in the public health and environment communities. If they are to achieve their goals, these coalitions must hold together for long periods of time, sometimes for years, and persevere in the face of great opposition. The best of them are superb examples of local democracy in action.