Wellness
A Vision for Sustainable Healthcare
WHERE: the branch restaurant, Kemptville
HOST: Sustainable North Grenville
Dr. Shawn Yakimovich is a naturopathic doctor who lives and practices in Kemptville. In this talk, he will review the challenges facing the current healthcare system, while looking at the opportunities for positive change that this crisis presents to our community.
Shawn will outline how naturopathic principles create a medical paradigm that is rational, preventative, holistic and responsive to community needs. Such a system requires us to be good stewards of our environment and is therefore both dependent on, and supportive of sustainable ecological, agricultural and economic practices. He believes unique opportunities exist in our local community that can make North Grenville a model community when it comes to the health of our residents and our environment.
For more information about this event please click here.
Video: London Community Gardens
London Community Gardens from Simon Brothers on Vimeo.
[ Hat tip to Carole Chang and the LLG Health Unit! ]
Social Psychosis and Collective Sanity
Common Dreams / Winslow Myers / 10 November 2011
We know from the sad experience of Nazi Germany or Khmer Rouge Cambodia that it is possible for whole nations to become mentally ill, with horrendous consequences. At the time, however, the Nazis or the Khmers had no idea that they were deeply out of touch with the reality that all people are equally worthy of respect and care.
The population of the earth recently surpassed 7 billion. As we move further into the condition of global villagehood, it becomes more important than ever to assess our shared mental health. Collectively we can less and less afford the distortions that afflict the psyches of individual persons, such as denial, regression into infantile rage, fantasy ideation, or blind projection outward onto “enemies” of our unresolved inner tensions. Everyone is aware of the potential horror, for example, of a nuclear weapon falling into the hands of someone not in the clearest of minds.
The social psychosis of denial is one of the greatest of our temptations.
Global Warming Effects and Threats on Human Health
Natural Resources Defense Council
Climate change is one of the most serious public health threats facing the nation, but few people are aware of how it can affect them. Children, the elderly, and communities living in poverty are among the most vulnerable. Click on a state on the map for more information on climate-health threats, actions being taken to prepare communities, and what you can do. [HC: This is relevant given our proximity to New York State.]
Confessions of a former Big Food executive
Grist / Andy Bellatti / 02 November 2011
The landscape has changed dramatically since I started my career at Nabisco in 1992. In response to Wall Street profit pressures and the growing power of retailers like Walmart, the food industry has undergone a tremendous wave of consolidation and cost cutting.
This has hurt our food supply in many ways. First, huge, multinational food companies now dominate the landscape. Wielding far greater lobbying power and much deeper pockets, these companies have been very successful in stagnating food regulation. Second, cost savings have been a key profit driver for the industry, but they've had a devastating impact on both food quality and food safety. Think factory farming and GMOs, just to name a couple of examples. Third, as consumers' health concerns have increased, processed food manufacturers have become even more aggressive in making dubious health claims or co-opting fad diets to market their brands and develop new products.
The net impact of this transformed landscape has been disastrous from a public health perspective -- with obesity rates skyrocketing and a never-ending flood of food recalls.
Tools of Change website
Tools of Change provides a very accessible set of resources for promoters of environmentally-friendly habits, products or services, including a Planning Guide, specific Tools of Change, and Case Studies illustrating their use. This introduction defines what we mean by "environmentally-friendly". It also reviews the promotional challenges we face in engaging individuals to take action and, at a broader level, in achieving more sustainable economic development. Finally, it provides a site guide tailored to your interests.
Tough Oil: Five public health challenges of petroleum scarcity
John Hopkins Public Health / Mike Field / Fall 2011
The coming era of petroleum scarcity is “probably the most underreported issue of our time,” says Schwartz, MD, MS. He and Bloomberg School colleagues have spent much of the past decade looking at how ever-more-costly petroleum will affect some of the key drivers of public health, and what strategies we should adopt now to minimize future health consequences. (Schwartz and Cindy Parker, MD, MPH ’00, an EHS assistant professor, were guest editors for a special issue on peak oil’s far-reaching impacts on health in September’s American Journal of Public Health.) Schwartz says the immediate challenge is simply making people aware of what’s headed our way: “Until we acknowledge the problem, there will be no will to develop responses.”
The five key areas that follow illustrate the potential health fallout of petroleum scarcity.
