Environmental Health

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Get the EHAC Earth Day 2023 Action Toolkit

What is the Environmental Health Action Committee?

The mission of the Environmental Health Action Committee is to establish, promote, and advance the voice and advocacy efforts of medical students fighting for solutions to climate change and the wide variety of environmental and health issues associated with climate change.

Our goals include:

Expanding medical education to include the role of climate change in public health
Advocating for legislation that promotes federal support to fight against climate change and to develop federal, state and local programs that promote environmental health and sustainability.
Promoting individual and community based changes in daily life that improves environmental and personal health.
Educating the public on the relation between environmental climate change and personal health by providing access to educational material and actionable activities.

EHAC 2023 Priorities

Overall, as AMSA’s newest action committee, our overarching focus this year is to bring awareness to the concept of environmental justice and its impact on human health. At AMSA, we recognize that the effects of environmental health are pervasive as it relates to health disparities based in race, gender, national origin, or income. This year, especially, environmental injustices have been highlighted during the COVID-19 pandemic with clear disparities in morbidity and mortality experienced by people of color. This is, of course, no coincidence.

The actions we take now to protect our communities will ensure the survival and health for tomorrow. Our elected officials cannot make this same mistake with global climate change. It is up to us, as the next generation of physicians, to ensure that we have a future with healthier and cleaner environments.

Resources to take action:

Join AMSA’s Environmental Health Action Committee and take action to address climate change. Get connected and sign up for leadership opportunities. To do so please sign up here.
Be sure to check out AMSA’s social media pages (Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter) for updates and how to get involved. Search for @AMSANational!
Highlight environmental health as a public health issue with your AMSA Chapter. Use the AMSA Environmental Health Action Committee Earth Day 2023 Action Toolkit to host virtual events, action days and seminars with your classmates. Look out for a “Project in a Box” to come in 2023 for Earth Week Planning for Local Chapters.