Environment Section meeting for the 2022 American Public Health Association Annual Meeting - Project Summary/Abstract
The American Public Health Association (APHA) is a large organization with a total membership
of over 25,000. Sections are the primary professional units of the APHA and conduct activities
that promote the mission and fulfill the goals of APHA. The 150th Annual Meeting will be held
from November 6-9 in Boston, Massachusetts. The theme for this year’s conference, with an
anticipated attendance of over 12,000 in total, is "150 Years of Creating the Healthiest Nation:
Leading the Path Toward Equity." The Environment Section’s goal for the Annual Meeting is to
foster interest in environmental health, increase student involvement, and provide educational
offerings on various environmental health topics. The Section offers a wide variety of sessions,
posters, plenary sessions, and special events to a diverse audience representing academics,
health professionals, community members, and students. The Section’s agenda focuses on
environmental advocacy, in particular addressing environmental justice and climate change. We
seek to engage students and connect them with mentors to learn about community-centered
environmental health initiatives and leaders. Our aims for the R13 grant are:
1) Build the next generation of environmental health leaders by providing a mechanism for
underrepresented students to attend, engage, and thrive at the meeting;
2) Foster mentorship between students and public health professionals, particularly around
environmental justice and environmental health science;
3) Advance the promotion of translating data to knowledge and action by connecting students to
a forum (i.e. a community of practice) for dissemination of results about research and advocacy;
4) Engage scholarship recipients beyond the annual meeting through Section leadership roles,
networking opportunities, and mentorship, as interested.
We leverage a network of 1,500 academic, governmental, and community-based environmental
health professionals to directly promote the conference scholarship to a wide range of schools
across the United States. In accomplishing this, we help create a professional pipeline within
APHA for underrepresented students geared towards environmental health science careers.
This provides mid-career and longtime members the opportunity to engage with the next
generation of environmental health scientists. In achieving these outcomes we support NIEHS’s
strategic plan and mission to conduct and support the very best environmental health sciences
in alignment with real-world public health needs, and to translate scientific findings into
knowledge that informs real-life individual and public health outcomes.
