Implications of the California Wildfires for Health, Communities, and Preparedness Proceedings of a Workshop (2020) / Chapter Skim
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8 Reflections on the Workshop
8 Reflections on the Workshop
Pages 103-112
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From page 103... ...
In the final session, nine members of the workshop steering committee and of the roundtables and forum that held the workshop commented on what they had heard and on the workshop's implications for the future. They were Kenneth Kizer; Wayne Jonas, executive director of the Samueli Integrative Health Programs; David Eisenman, professor-in-residence at the David Geffen School of Medicine and the Fielding School of Public Health at UCLA; Julie Baldwin, director of the Center for Health Equity Research and professor of health sciences at Northern Arizona University; Colleen Ryan, professor of surgery, Harvard Medical School, American Burn Association; Winston Wong, medical director of community health and director of disparities improvement and quality initiatives for Kaiser Permanente; Michelle Bell, the Mary E
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From page 104... ...
, dietary related conditions (including food insecurity, obesity, and the growing worldwide epidemic of diabetes) , the importance of cancer in an aging world population, disorders of brain function (including mental health and neurodegenerative condi tions)
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From page 105... ...
In addition to global warming and climate change, the alarming trends having potentially far-reaching implications for human health and population sustainability include worsening air pollution in many of the world's rapidly growing metropolitan areas, ocean acidification, deforestation, built-environment issues, diminishing water supply and growing water pollution, decreased biodiversity, loss of habitat and increasingly overlapping human–animal habitat, loss of apex predators, and diverse changes in disease patterns. The combination of these many anthropogenic environmental changes could have "potentially calamitous effects on the human population," Kizer said.
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From page 106... ...
HEALTH EFFECTS Summarizing the available scientific evidence, Bell drew the overall conclusion that limited but growing data indicate that smoke and other forms of environmental contamination from wildfires are very harmful for human health. Furthermore, the implications of these results extend to distant communities, and "if we really want to understand the overall impact of wildfires on human health, we have to include everything." But some of the results are conflicting and uncertain and will require more research to resolve, she said.
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From page 107... ...
Health care has taken steps in this direction, but continuity needs to extend beyond health care so that it includes all the determinants of health, Martinez said, "everything outside of the brick and mortar of the clinic that impacts an individual or community." As such, the need for continuity of care extends from well before a disaster to well after. Understanding needs throughout this span calls for more than biomedical research; it also requires translational research and implementation science, according to Martinez.
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From page 108... ...
Taking one of the worst possible disasters, Eisenman pointed out that a nuclear war would generate huge numbers of displaced persons, whether internally within a single country like the United States or across international borders. The challenges of receiving communities today, even on a much smaller scale, may provide data for future events, he said.
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From page 109... ...
. We can provide power to those communities." A good example, he said, is the well-being in the national index framework, released right before the workshop, which focuses on positive social determinants rather than negative ones like a deprivation index.
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From page 110... ...
From a distance, the media pays more attention to the Hollywood homes in southern California than to vulnerable populations and communities. "The opportunity to elevate and amplify the voices of vulnerable communities throughout is critical." She emphasized the need and opportunity to apply a health equity lens to not only wildfires but all disasters, explaining that "the inequities that we have in all locations are the real disasters," she said.
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From page 111... ...
People with different socioeconomic backgrounds, ages, races, ethnicities, and other distinguishing characteristics are exposed to different levels of environmental contaminants before a disaster occurs, on both an individual level and a community level. "Even if a disaster response were somehow made equal, we still would have people who, due to their baseline health status, their compromised health status, their occupations, their access to health care, and other factors, may still have a more severe response to contaminants such as wildfire smoke or water quality from wildfires than other populations," she said.
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From page 112... ...
As Eisenman noted, it brought together fire researchers, practitioners, community organizers, public health experts, disaster researchers, health equity experts, and even climate change researchers. "I would hope that the National Academies or others might think about how to tap this kind of transdisciplinary energy and move forward." Bell made a similar point: "We had medical and health care professionals, disaster planning, community organizations, scientists, government organizations, and many others with different perspectives.
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