The 131st Annual Meeting (November 15-19, 2003) of APHA

Abstract #71189

Bruce Jennings, PhD, Senate Committee on Environmental Quality, California Legislature, 1305 Kaiser Road, SW, Olympia, WA 98512, 360-866-4593, Bruce.Jennings@sen.ca.gov

This presentation examines some of the contemporary political controversies involving environmental policy in California with the objective of defining a broader political agenda for public health advocates in the twenty-first century. Since the mid-1980s California has pursued a regulatory regime in which certain lines of scientific inquiry play an increasingly crucial role in defining the direction of the State’s policy, while other kinds of knowledge are neglected or more actively suppressed. Viewing California’s policy choices from a perspective of dominant fields of inquiry versus neglected kinds of knowledge represents an alternative vantage on the landscape of policy choices in Sacramento, Washington, D. C. and beyond. This alternative perspective recognizes that the current dominance of certain forms of scientific inquiry in environmental policy might be constructively engaged in the California Legislature by those scientists, e.g., public health professionals, who currently provide only a subordinate role in the State’s environmental policy process.

Learning Objectives:

• 3. Appreciate the structural problems of California's environmental policies over the last twenty years.
  7. Identify prospective areas for environmental policy initiatives that include a more central role for public health.

Keywords: Environmental Health, Public Health Policy

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.