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AVAILABLE SPRING 2008!
A Community Guide to Environmental Health
by Jeff Conant and Pam Fadem
For people everywhere, but especially those in the Global South who face poverty and hardship on a daily basis, long-term community health is intricately linked with sustainable use of natural resources. Facing the extreme challenges of urbanization and industrialization, reduced biodiversity, water scarcity, topsoil loss, and climate change, the need for educational resources to help people protect their health and improve their livelihoods is greater than ever. But resources designed for use by those who live in the Global South are few and far between.
A Community Guide to Environmental Health offers individuals and grassroots groups educational and mobilizing tools to combat the effects of environmental degradation on people’s health, and provides concrete know-how to achieve true sustainability at the community level. This groundbreaking book, developed over ten years with input from hundreds of community partners worldwide, is simply written and profusely illustrated for use by urban and rural health promoters, development workers, environmental activists, and community leaders.
Beginning by addressing people’s most immediate problems and moving to the social, political, and economic causes underlying environmental health concerns, the book shows how we can work together to protect our environment and improve health for all. We believe A Community Guide has the potential to catalyze the growing environmental health movement the way Where There Is No Doctor did the primary health care movement 30 years ago.
Key topics include:
- Evaluating environmental health problems and mobilizing for change
- Protecting water sources and designing appropriate sanitation
- Protecting watersheds, preventing erosion, planting trees, restoring land
- Food security and methods for sustainable farming
- Preventing and reducing pollution and exposure to toxics at work, at home, and in the community
- Safely managing solid waste and health care waste
- Reducing harm from mining, oil, and energy production
- Preventing infectious diseases such as malaria, dengue, cholera, and TB
With dozens of activities to stimulate critical thinking and discussion, instructions for simple health technologies such as ecological toilets, natural home cleaning products, and water purification methods, and hundreds of drawings to make the messages clear, A Community Guide to Environmental Health will be useful for people just beginning to address environmental health threats as well as people with many years’ experience in the field. Here’s what some of our reviewers and collaborators say:
“A Community Guide to Environmental Health will restore hope in communities that they can play active roles in preserving environmental
health and by so doing, stay healthy. With this excellent Guide, community
people can now learn how to protect themselves and also know what projects
to resist in their communities. A very timely publication.”
-- Rev. Nnimmo Bassey, Environmental Rights Action, Nigeria
“You have produced something quite extraordinary. The Community Guide will certainly be much used for the benefit of poor communities around the world. Too little has been done to provide this type of practical and useful information to communities. The human rights approach in the guide is especially valuable.”
-- Ingvar Andersson, former Head of Water Division, Swedish International Development Cooperation (Sida)
For a partial list of individuals and organizations who worked to help Hesperian research and develop A Community Guide, see the List of Collaborators. (PDF)
Related Materials
Materials from the book are already in wide use and available as free downloads.
Donate now!
We depend on the support of people like you who share our vision of a healthier and more just world. Your gift will enable this book to be translated into many languages and distributed to communities around the world that cannot afford to buy it. Your actions make a difference. Please give online or call Edith Friedman at (510) 845-1447 or Email to make a donation over the phone.