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ENVIRONMENT AND MEDICINE COMMITTEE |
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WHY? One of the major issues facing underserved communities, as well as the rest of us, is the destruction of the environment. Often, economically disadvantaged communities are the first and most heavily affected by environmental pollution and poor sustainability practices. From the rainforests of the Amazon to the stretch of the Mississippi between Baton Rouge and New Orleans known as Cancer Alley, the world's poorest citizens are becoming victims of our flagrant disregard for the health of the environment and its inhabitants. In conjunction with the uptown Green Club, CMIG has formed an Environment and Medicine Committee in order to address some of the health issues involved in the preservation or destruction of the environment. CMIG's Environment and Medicine Committee seeks to promote:
MEDiC: RECYCLING MEDICAL EQUIPMENT Our newest project - this program will collect unused, reusable or extra equipment from many different areas of Tulane University Hospital to be sent to hospitals in Nicaragua and Honduras. Click here for more info. EARTH DAY 2002 For Earth Day 2002, we raised awareness at Tulane Medical School with a display, a table, and a lunchtime speaker. The display focused on medicines from the rainforest as well as facts and statistics about its destruction and information about landfills, where most of New Orleans trash goes. At the table we distributed information about some of the current initiatives being discussed in our country, where you can recycle just about everything in New Orleans, what Tulane Med is currently doing to help the environment, and what you can do - seven places to be green every day. Our lunchtime speaker, Dr. Valerie Wilson of Tulane/Xavier Center for Bioenvironmental Research, gave a very informative and persuasive presentation on the issue of Environmental Ethics. While highlighting some of the issues that have been felt very directly here in New Orleans, she focused on the larger picture of environmental justice as an outgrowth of the well-founded and well-studied, but perhaps not well-publicized field of Environmental Ethics, and stressed the need for more integration of an understanding of the effects of environmental issues on health into the medical school curriculum. BRINGING IT FULL CIRCLE Finally, Earth Day 2002 was the kick-off of the Environment and Medicine Committee's Full Circle Pledge campaign, an initiative which hopes to convince all departments and student groups within Tulane Med and beyond to commit to using recycling paper, recycling the paper that they use, and reducing paper waste whenever possible. If you have any questions about the Environment and Medicine Committee agenda, suggestions for an issue that you feel should be addressed, or would like to join the E&M Committee, please contact Amy Vaughan, Fasih Hameed, or Jacquie Firth LINKS of INTEREST
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