Rural System's

The Environment and Health Group

"The promise of business is to increase the general well-being of humankind through service, a creative invention and ethical philosophy." Hawken 1993:1

"We do not believe that health promotion rests solely as the responsibility of health workers. Since health is a confluence of the social, environmental, political, and economic realities that we face, all of us have a part in ensuring the health of the community."
Noilyn Abesamis-Mendoza, Deputy Director of Outreach and Programs for the New York University Center for the Study of Asian American Health, founder and co-chair of the Kalusugan Coalition. Read the full interview at http://depts.washington.edu/ccph/featuredmember.html.

Following discussions and correspondence with Mrs. Dawna Clephas, a member of the Craig County, Virginia, school board, we have developed a concept of a subsystem of Rural System. It is called "the Environment and Health Group" and the name does not denote clearly its role within Rural System the objectives of which are :

• meaningful employment
• community stability
• quality of life, and
• improved natural resource management.

We know that health, even in the medical world, has never been easily defined. Some say it is a failed pursuit, peculiar conference-speak rather than an effort to embrace the precision of modern science. Ecologists and foresters now use the word extensively. Leopold used it in his oft-quoted book, Sand County Almanac. The word entered the urgency of the 1992 Rio Conference on the Environment and Development (Frid 2003:429). A textbook about tree insects and diseases became called one on forest health. Legislation is now similarly named, disguised thinning of forests and reducing forest fire fuels. Ecologists have similarly concentrated on ecosystem health. We reluctantly use health in our title for a proposed enterprise, a subsystem within Rural System. It will probably become a code word for an enterprise that operates first out of Craig County, Virginia (and then franchised) to achieve the following objectives:

• to provide efficient, skilled, and productive meaningful health and nutrition-related employment for citizens and others
• to increase the availability to county citizens and guests of healthful foods and water
• to increase levels of citizen knowledge about practical aspects of adequate health and nutrition
• to increase an adequate health and health care index score for citizens and
• to increase a score for local adequate health care delivery
• to increase healthful environments that are reasonably free of disease-vectors, heavy metal, and organic pesticides, and other pollutants
• to provide activity and recreational opportunities,e.g., ranging supportive of healthful living

The demands are great and the needs are real, not mere "wants" of a few people.

To achieve these objectives, we imagine a comprehensive unifying human nutritional health system with components of:

• waste processing to garden amendments
• distributed organic and safe gardening and soil enhancement
• human health geography - GIS maps of conditions and factors
• human nutrition
• dietary programs
• delivery of healthful local farm produce to schools
• food preparation and culinary arts
• meat processing (aging to home delivery of grass-fed beef and others)
• distance-learning and Internet-based education about the topics of the subsystem
• sale of select products and software
• weight-related recreation
• nutritional-health monitoring and other feedback programs
• feedforward - practical applications of predictive capabilities

...being developed in and for that county, integrated with the school system, making it nationally known and a prototype having:

• Superior home gardens at select sites producing healthful foods economically
• Marketing of products using the Internet and minimizing transportation energy costs
• Cost-reducing incentives for parents to provide children with designed diets
• Monitored student and parent/guardian health changes linked to diets
• Education in preparing superior meals that meet personal individual consumer needs (expert-system prescriptions; distance learning; financial incentive-based)
• Developing (perhaps new) especially healthful foods or meal units (age-based and activity-based specialties)
• Cost- and energy-effective delivery of meals
• Special foods and computer enhanced menus
• Activity-analyses (and prescriptions and incentives) for healthful living
• Career ladders in foods, nutrition, and human health, making employment of people from that county eagerly sought
• Diverse research program within the County with Virginia Tech involvement at many levels
• Educational strategies promoting health- and disease-related interventions
• Health and food related specialty schools (e.g., chefs, monitors, teachers)
• Healthful and efficient waste-product systems (compost, waste water, etc.) at all points of the system
• Marketing the entire system to others, showing the prominence of Craig County, its people, and the country … the system being its new low-impact "industry."

"Business people must … dedicate themselves to transforming commerce to a restorative undertaking..." Hawken 1993:2

See Science and Environmental Health Network

Dr. Larry Brilliant (Google Foundation) describes : "The climate crisis is predicted to contribute to a doubling of the number of people without adequate food and water, with the highest burden on the most vulnerable amongst us. This makes it the greatest health crisis of all time."

See our main notes on and rural health , on Human Health , and the Challenge.

Perhaps you will share ideas with me about some of the topic(s) above .

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Rural System
Glossary
Robert H. Giles, Jr.
January 13, 2008