By Yervand Kondrahjian | Staff Writer

Environmental Health is a crucial section of public health that focuses on the relationship between people and their environment to ensure that communities around individuals are safe and healthy. The aim is to promote human health and well-being, as well as a safe and sound environment. It is a key part of any comprehensive public health system that works to protect people and provide surrounding communities with healthier environments by advancing policies and programs to reduce harmful chemicals and other environmental exposures in air, water, soil, and food.

There are five basic disciplines that generally contribute to the field of environmental health: Biostatistics, Environmental Health Sciences, Epidemiology, Health Policy Management, as well as Social and Behavioral Sciences.

Biostatistics plays a critical role in environmental health as a large quantity of data is needed to allow for reliable conclusions regarding environmental health. Therefore, data is collected, analyzed, processed, and further interpreted to provide an insight into shaping healthcare decisions intelligently. Biostatistics helps to test hypotheses and perform statistical analyses resulting in accurate conclusions.

Environmental Health Sciences is responsible for understanding the role of environmental factors in human health and diseases. The chemicals surrounding us in the air we breathe, the things we touch on a daily basis, as well as the water we drink are analyzed, and research is conducted to help us understand, prevent, and mitigate the impact of environmental exposures and climate change on human health.

Epidemiology is the ability to understand any given disease through examining the distribution of the disease and the state of each distribution to determine how environmental exposures impact human health. Epidemiology is used in environmental health to protect against disease, illness, injury, developmental abnormalities, or worse, death, where the factors may occur naturally or may be introduced into environments where people live, work, or play.

Health policies are put into place outlining the aims and principles in relation to managing the environmental effects and aspects of its operations. It is essential and beneficial in terms of environmental health as it implements environmental management standards and outlines a commitment to managing the environment in a responsible and positive way to keep the surrounding healthy and clean.

Finally, Social and Behavioral Sciences contribute to the field of environmental health by understanding how healthy environments are sustained among different populations using different sociocultural and behavioral factors. They identify and analyze the social determinants and behavioral risk factors associated with public health issues. Learning and knowing how communities and social factors contribute to various public health solutions and policies is crucial to environmental health.