Sustainable Seafood Sourcing in New England

On March 11, on behalf of 657 health professionals, HCWH and Physicians for Social Responsibility submitted comments on the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) proposed rule on the Veterinary Feed Directive, which would require veterinarians to oversee the use of all antibiotics in animal feed and water.

With help from Food&Water Watch, City Councils across the country are considering adopting resolutions in favor of ending antibiotic misuse in animal agriculture.

Two bills before the California state Senate and Assembly could impact how antibiotics are used in food animal agriculture.

Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren stood up for public health and asked tough questions of the FDA at a hearing on March 13. (Skip ahead to the 45 minute mark.) HCWH applauds her leadership.

Pledge Signers Near 500 Thanks to Washington State

Twenty-five hospitals in King County, Washington have joined forces for creating a sustainable food system. Their first joint step was to ask all of the public and non-profit hospitals in King County to sign the Healthy Food in Health Care Pledge.

"We were all extremely concerned about, and working on, how to slow the obesity and type 2 diabetes epidemic hitting our community and our country," said Tricia West of Evergreen Health. "It didn't take us long to realize we could have a much larger and more positive

"King County hospitals have recognized when it comes to health risks that are truly threatening our community, they can impact positive changes through collaboration." --Scott Bond, president and CEO of the Washington State Hospital Association

impact on the health of our community if we worked together. As health care organizations, we are obligated to not only address the health of our patients, but that of our larger community as well."

The hospitals and health systems include: Evergreen Health, Franciscan Health System, Group Health Cooperative, MultiCare, Overlake Medical Center, Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, Seattle Children's Hospital, Snoqualmie Valley Hospital District, Swedish Medical Center, University of Washington Medicine, and Virginia Mason.

"It's important that King County hospitals have recognized when it comes to health risks that are truly threatening our community, they can impact positive changes through collaboration," said Scott Bond, president and CEO of the Washington State Hospital Association. "Our hospitals are committed to creating healthy communities. By working on obesity and diabetes prevention and by increasing access to care, they will save lives."

In 2014, the workgroup is asking all King County hospitals to take the Healthier Hospital Initiative's "Healthier Food Challenge." "It's an incredible opportunity for hospitals in King County to combine forces and demand healthier products from their vendors. We'll be able to track the dollars shifted, and hope that these 25 hospitals create a model for collaboration that will continue to transform the health care foodservice industry," said Kathy Pryor of Health Care Without Harm's Washington Healthy Food in Health Care Program.

Clinician Champion: Robert M. Gould, MD

Robert M. Gould, MD graduated from Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and from 1981 until 2012 worked as a Pathologist at Kaiser Hospital in San Jose, California. In 2012 Bob was appointed as an Associate Adjunct Professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences at the UCSF School of Medicine, to serve as Director of Health Professional Outreach and Education for the UCSF Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment (PRHE). Since 1989, he has been President of the San Francisco-Bay Area Chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR). Since 1993, Bob has also been a member of the Board of National PSR, serving as President in 2003 and now again in 2014. Since 1986, Bob has also  been very active in the Peace Caucus of the American Public Health Association, for which he has been Chairperson for numerous years, and in 2009 APHA awarded Bob the prestigious Sidel-Levy Peace Award for his lifelong work against nuclear weapons and  militarism. Since 1992 Bob has been a leading member of the Environmental Committee of the Santa Clara County chapter of the California Medical Association (CMA). For his work within CMA, he received the Santa Clara County Medical Association's "Outstanding Contribution in Community Service" award in 2001, and "Outstanding Contribution to the Medical Society award in 2012. Dr. Gould was also listed as one of Santa Clara County's "Top 400 Physicians" in peer-review surveys published in San Jose Magazine in 2001 through 2007. Healthy Food in Health Care caught up with Dr. Gould to talk about his environmental health advocacy efforts.

Q. Could you describe your advocacy efforts surrounding environmental health and food?
A. My advocacy efforts in this area are largely based in my long-standing roots and practice in the health professional community, and have, among other efforts, concentrated on making the institutions where we work places where we can have a major impact on environmental issues. Healthy and sustainable hospital practices reinforce broader health professional and societal movements towards reducing chemical toxicants and dealing with global warming. Reinforcing this institutional work, it has been extremely important to also move these issues within medical and other health professional associations.

Q. When and how did your interest in the intersection between human and environmental health begin?
A. I grew up in a family that was committed to social justice, informed by the impacts of the Nazi Holocaust on our family and our world. For me this connected powerfully to the experiences of growing up in the Cold War against the backdrop of the Civil Rights and anti-Vietnam War movements. At a very early age, I learned about the health impacts of fallout resulting from global nuclear testing when my father removed bones from canned fish because of his expressed concerns about strontium-90 contamination, and remember being profoundly impacted later at the age of 12 about the dangers of nuclear war when seeing Fail-Safe and Dr. Strangelove for the first time. Over time, these concerns naturally connected to related issues being raised by the growing environmental movement about the environmental and public health effects of water, air, and land pollution, and later to those associated with global climate change. All of these issues converged for me through my medical training and practice, and pointed to PSR as a natural place to address them within my chosen profession.

Q. In what ways are you able to integrate environmental health education and advocacy into your traditional schedule?
A. For many years as a pathologist at Kaiser Permanente, the environmental health work that I was doing with PSR became increasingly consistent with environmental stewardship work of Kaiser that was connected with the work of HCWH. This facilitated the ability to deliver presentations on health impacts of global warming, and various chemical toxicants in hospital Grand Rounds and other health professional fora, and colleagues within Kaiser and the Santa Clara County Medical Association supported a wide variety of environmental health policy initiatives that became policy of the California Medical Association, some subsequently providing the basis for American Medical Association policy. Now that I'm retired from my pathology practice and working with the UCSF PHRE as director of Health Professional Outreach and Education, I have an enhanced ability to connect with fellow health professionals on a broad range of hospital-based environmental issues contained within the scope of the Healthier Hospitals Initiative (HHI) such as food policy issues, For example, I now participate in the Academic Senate Sustainability Committee at UCSF which has, through the leadership of PSR Dr. Tom Newman and others, moved forward an antibiotics purchasing resolution, and we are now considering other policies that can reduce UC's overall fossil footprint as well.

Q. Any recommendations on how other clinicians can become more involved in advocating for a healthy food system?
A. I would direct them first and foremost to their hospitals - to first check if their hospital or health system has signed onto HHI, and if not, to work towards getting such institutional involvement to support efforts to develop a Healthier Food Challenge or other related efforts. For physicians and other busy health professionals, having a practical way to align their concerns with institutional environmental stewardship efforts is a key step towards developing the clinical leadership so needed on these initiatives. Such involvement and related skills-development also serves as a natural bridge towards contributing critical health leadership in related community movements and policy arenas that greatly advance our overall work on a healthy food system within the context of advancing our overall environmental and public health agenda.