Main description:

Health and sustainability have become ubiquitous topics in all realms of popular discourse. What these discussions often overlook is the fact that the two concepts are interrelated, and that their surrounding policies and practices can often inform and reinforce each other. As sustainability measures are already in place across many levels of government, there is now an opportunity to extend these principles to improve health care and health care policy.

Health and Sustainability: An Introduction details how the values of sustainability can be applied to the design of health systems and the delivery of primary care. By providing a practical framework for understanding complicated sustainability problems related to health, the book offers an authoritative resource for understanding:

- health and environmental rights
- parallels between human toxicology and ecotoxicology
- how health promotion strategy can be a template for sustainability
- health science and how it can be used to support decisions in health and sustainability
- how scientific knowledge is achieved, understood, accepted, and used in health and environmental advocacy, and how this relates to sustainability

Students and practitioners in health will benefit from this introduction to sustainability, and those in sustainability and environmental studies will benefit from this application to human health. Health and Sustainability offers a roadmap for successfully integrating these approaches for healthier people and environment.

Contents:

Foreword on Health ; Foreword on Sustainability ; Preface ; Chapter 1 ; Health and Sustainability ; Chapter 2 ; Ways of Knowing ; Chapter 3 ; Catastrophic Failure ; Chapter 4 ; Pollution and Contamination ; Chapter 5 ; Chemical Pollution and Health ; Chapter 6 ; Ecosystem Change and Infectious Disease ; Chapter 7 ; Socially-Mediated Issues ; Chapter 8 ; Ecosystem Services and Health ; Chapter 9 ; Artificial Ecosystems ; Chapter 10 ; Energy ; Chapter 11 ; Culture and Rights ; Chapter 12 ; Spirituality and Sustainability ; Chapter 13 ; The Professionalization of Sustainability ; Selected Sources ; Index