Semester Conclusion

Overall, Communication of health science and the environment has been a fairly positive experience. The knowledge i felt that was taught was practical in a meaningful way. Many things like the structure of consumption and things like recycling, advertisements and information will be able to be used in the future to hopefully aid in turning the worlds crisis’ around. Researching about the world for this class and making the students educate themselves about global problems is a great tactic to creating productive citizens who are well informed and compassionate about the environment and other people as well as their cultures.

My favorite section that we went over was Science. The readings form the book were fascinating for me,learning about the faith based vs the scientific and their methods of thinking was an eye opening lesson; b/c it help me consider how many different types of people in the world  and that they all think unique points of view. Climate change and the state of in the environment came off relevant, and it shed light on humans effect on the natural world.

There are so many great things that one can take from this class. I came into it randomly but it went better than expected and i’m honestly glad I signed up. Ill have to remember to keep my notes when the semesters over.

Chandler B

Eco friendly homes

Due to global warming, temperatures are out of control in some areas, causing crops to die from not being properly protected, animals to lose habitat as well as many other terrible things. As people we dont have to sit back and watch our planet burn. In our everyday lives there are things we can do that contribute to the preservation of the environment. Mostly everybody knows that changing the lightbulbs to LED, or to shower instead of bathe, or even practice RR&R. But in small amounts, it really doesn’t have the impact most people desire. As a homeowner, considering things from an ecological perspective, it is east to find even more ways to cut down on energy, as well as reduce your personal costs in the long run. Make sure home appliances are energy star certified, these products are a healthier output, and dont compromise performance. Having proper insulation throughout the home is also important since 50% of our energy is accounted in heating and cooling alone. Making sure cracks, windows and small ducts are covered will lower energy consumption and save $$$ on the energy bill. It is even possible to landscape your yard to maximize/minimize the amount of sunlight that enters your home; creating shade in the summertime, and allowing more light to travel inside during winter will improve your control of the thermostat. There are countless ways people can eliminate unnecessary energy expenditure, Its all about giving up some, in order to take everything and not loosing the environment to pollution and global warming.

Chandler B

 

Greenwashing

In class we talked about greenwashing and how it affects consumers view on their relationship with the environment. Products like cleaning supplies, snacks, children’s toys, home appliances and much more. Using the 7 sins of greenwashing it made it easier to spot out the “white lies” or misleading information that companies use to give the image of Friendly production in retrospect to nature. Coca-Cola is an example; they created new green cans that change the way people thing in terms of soft drinks. Green makes people think about the environment more and are often eager to take part. Coca-Cola has partnered with WWF in order to publicly announce that they are helping conserve the major rivers of the world. Not mentioning how the rivers jot so jacked up to begin with. For every liter of coke, it costs about 2.5 liters of water, which ends up totaling billions of gallons of water per year. Coke consumes 1/5 of the water in the America alone, which acts as a major stressor to the environment. Water is even needed to grow the corn which coke extracts its sugars from. The plastic waste everybody is so familiar with, is also another huge factor as to why Coca-Cola needed to step its efforts up, because slowly buy surely, companies that abuse the environment, yet give nothing back are beginning to suffer. Higher education and the will to participate in moving forward to protect the environment is what needs to happen, if humans dont want to screw themselves out of a world in the future.

Chandler Braxton

Source: http://www.businesspundit.com/the-top-25-greenwashed-products-in-america/

Advertising and consumption

We learned about the power of advertisements and how we react to them. Deciding what to buy, and what is “new” in the world of consuming. Advertisements can be found anywhere in the world. That little pop up that wants you to buy a new pair of socks, or offer a deal on the latest set of headphones has more influence than one might think. Corbett suggests that the average person is exposed to about 3000 ad a day, while we remember 80 and are responsive to only about 12. Those ads that we can’t escape lead to higher rates of consumerism. The billion dollar e-cigarette industry is one example of how ads can affect the outcome of a purchase. Almost all tobacco use begins before the age of 18, a study conducted on 20,000 high schoolers and middle schoolers found that in higher amounts of viewing, 54% of high schoolers reported that they would be open to trying e-cigs, and 43% said they could consider them within the next year. While the 10,000 or so high schoolers results came back showing more likely to try than the middle schoolers, lower numbers and less willing to try was a common factor among kids who didn’t watch a lot of tv or use the internet in their spare time. The conclusion of this study found that the higher frequency of advertisement exposure lead to increased odds of one trying e-cigs. This study was only done on public and private school kids; drop outs and home schooled kids were not considered.

Source: http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2016/04/21/peds.2015-4155

Chandler B

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Tourism and the environment

Last week we discussed how tourism is the largest industry in the world. The billions of dollars it generates create millions of jobs across the world and help the economy stabilize. Tourism can be dangerous to the environment however, tourists are infamous for trashing the native land which they are visiting. Leaving harmful plastics and metals on the land and beaches which come in contact with the plants and animals. Boats also dump toxics and fuel into oceans and drop their anchor on sensitive organisms underneath the surface.

One great example is that of coral reefs found in the oceans. The Great Barrier Reef is suffering what is known as “coral bleaching” which occurs when water temperatures rise continuously for too long. Bleaching affects the entire ecosystem; it causes coral to reject the algae that live in them and give the wide range of colors it normally has; causing the coral to become transparent and exposing the skeleton underneath. Fish that depend on coral for food and shelter are forced away and starve, the larger predatory fish eventually disappear too; even birds that use these fish for energy are forced into competition and loose population numbers. Of the thousands of square miles of the great barrier reef, it is estimated almost a quarter have died off due to the effects of bleaching to what is referred to as the largest living organism. To recover, the reefs need time and the absence of stressors like human interaction and pollution. Humans need to realize the ocean is a completely different world than our own, different methods of protection and stable water temperature conditions could make the reefs bounce back.

  Sources:

 http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jun/07/the-great-barrier-reef-a-catastrophe-laid-bare

 australia.gov.au/…tory/great-barrier-reef

Ecological spectrum

How humans interact with and view the environment can be broken down into multiple ways, in which we categorize the level of importance from least to most. This is called the ecological spectrum; beginning way back, humans saw nature as an abundance of resources and not much thought was put into how the earth would be affected by our dominance. Practices in unrestrained indstrumentalism, which is essentially free reign on the environment have caused climate change, habitat loss and in some cases extinction. as time progresses and people learn, we recognized that our actions can have drastic consequences if not checked. Conservationalism, Preservationism, Ethics and value ideologies and transformative ideologies are all chronological on the spectrum. different parts of the world still practice all forms of these ideologies, which has become a greater concern in the 20th century.

A North Dakota indian tribe has been protesting the construction of a crude oil pipeline; it would essentially run through the tribes land transporting hundreds of thousands of oil through the tribes land each day. Despite a relatively peaceful protest, the Standing Rock Sioux tribe have been met with arrests and hostility and abuse by law enforcement. Other than having their rights violated during protests, the tribes major concern is how the pipeline will affect their community. They consider the project an environmental and cultural threat to the land. Possible leaks of crude oil in construction, or after completion is dangerous to their water supply and claim that the pipeline will disturb the land of which their ancestors are buried. These types of figures are the ones the environmental spectrum considers more human centered, and arguably not looking out for the ecological better of tomorrow. Left unchecked, big money will always find ways to trample over people and their beliefs, the environment and its resources to gain a profit; b/c the future belongs to a different group of people, thinking that its not their problem is dangerous indeed.

Chandler B

Health Politics and Mental Health

In class we talked about health politics and how people ultimately agree to disagree. We discussed how they mainly take place within the confines of families, classrooms, agencies and Religious sects. Along with multiple factors that influence health politics such as the lab rat phobia or historic un-representation of women, black people or other race. I was thinking about the illness of addiction, particularly over the large controversy debating over whether addiction is a mental illness or not which has created a gap of sympathy v hostility. It is a major gray area of discussion because addiction can be viewed as a choice not disease. Illness does not always trigger drug or alcohol use; but there are links between drug use, addiction and mental illness. Individuals who self medicate are also often at risk because without medical diagnosis proper treatment will not likely be accessed. Mental disorders often play a role in the use of substances as a psychological crutch. Younger numbers of abuse problems are reported due to the brains continued development, leaving them more vulnerable to addiction issues. Mood disorders can increase chances of substance experimentation as much a 10percent. Consumption of alcohol in small amounts has limited effects,however binge drinking and excessive use adds strain unto the brain which can chemically trigger adverse behavior. Proper education in the classroom and family as well as participation of agencies that seek to help those in need can all aid in preventing harmful activity. looking down on people  with metal illness leads us nowhere into the future.

http://health.usnews.com/health-news/patient-advice/articles/2016-09-07/links-between-addiction-and-mental-illness-myths-vs-facts

blog3

Blog 3
Talking about public health seemed pretty informative last week. I personally enjoyed talking about prescription medication and how each level of an issue can be broken down into respective parties. From what I’ve taken from it, an issue that affects society, say Heroin(or mental disorders); gains attention and demands action. Publicly the drug ravages communities, destroys families and creates crime and violence. Research is done over the aftereffects and Individuals contribute to public health by giving up their time and resources in efforts to educate and strengthen society. if a person or interest group gains favor they might run politically. laws can be put into place over how drugs can be dispensed and prescribed at one time. The cost is also considered, what areas need more attention, what areas can afford a higher asking price for the drug. Last year a governor passed a new law in Kentucky that imposes harsher consequences on dealers of the substance, as well as the increase of substance abuse programs and the addition to the prescription narcan which helps reverse an overdose. Cliniques offering clean needles also started appearing, in an attempt to keep transmitted disease off the streets. A new policy in the law known as “good samaritan”, gives limited immunity to those who report an overdose, in efforts to lower death on account of witness being afraid of arrest.

 

Sources:
http://publichealthlawcenter.org/sites/default/files/resources/phlc-fs-state-local-reg-authority-publichealth-2015_0.pdf

The Quantitative and Qualitative

[1st post] Learning about the different approaches to health, we talked about the quantitate and qualitative methods is reason. When it comes to passing information among each other, we have 2 main ways of communication. Quantitate, which can be broken down into quantity, usually comes associated with numbers, statistics, diagrams and what not. They are the facts that are on the global scale. which are presented to us in reports. This research allows us to make comparisons to a particular standard and may allow us to predict health risk with the use of measurements and mortality rates.

The use of Qualitative data connects us with stories(narratives) that help share the meanings of health and illness. This kind of approach might answer the how or why, questions regarding health. People can understand basic truths around disease with the use of narratives. Community can be a resource for communicating information; the word of mouth is more impactful in trying to convince people to be healthier because it is your own, people you knows’ or people you don’t knows’ experience of a situation. The sublime effects of ones illness being told to you is more powerful than a statistic from a group of people you don’t know. Being story telling creatures, the social instinct in our genetics will transmit information differently if it were said directly to us or if we were to say read about data in a magazine.

In my opinion I would prefer to learn about something via quantitate approach. Simply because hearing someones story is so much more fascinating than reading a devastating clip from a paper. Since we try to relate to someone when they share experience, it impacts me longer than reading something. js