enHealth Council - What is enHealth?

The 'new public health' is a concept in current use which focuses on issues of population and the environment conceived of in their widest sense to include psychological, social and physical elements. Environmental health is a key component of the new public health, it provides the basic infrastructure on which all health is built and addresses emerging health risks arising from the pressures development places on the human environment.

The National Environmental Health Strategy defines environmental health as those aspects of human health determined by physical, chemical, biological and social factors in the environment. Environmental health does primarily concern itself with the physical impacts of the environment on health, however there is usually a link between physical, social and psychological aspects that disallows addressing any in isolation.

The National Environmental Health Strategy defines the practice of environmental health as covering the assessment, correction, control and prevention of environmental factors that can adversely affect health, as well as the enhancement of those aspects of the environment that can improve human health.

Environmental health hazards can be divided into two categories from which different issues arise. Firstly, there are traditional hazards which are associated with lack of development and secondly, there are modern hazards which are associated with unsustainable development.

Traditional hazards are usually associated with poverty and insufficient development, examples include;

lack of access to safe drinking water,
inadequate basic sanitation in the household and community,
inadequate waste disposal,
occupational injury hazards, and
disease vector prevalence.

Modern hazards are associated with development that occurs without sufficient health and environmental safeguards and involves unsustainable consumption of natural resources, examples include;

water pollution from populated areas, industry and intensive agriculture,
urban air pollution from transport and fossil fuel power stations,
hazardous waste accumulation,
chemical and radiation hazards resulting from introduction of new technologies,
emerging and re-emerging infectious disease hazards,
deforestation and land degradation, and
global climate change.

It can be seen that environmental health is a multi-disciplinary field, as its practice requires the collaborative efforts of those working in areas such as health, environmental protection, social sciences, applied sciences, engineering, land use planning and economics.

Essential to effective environmental health management are the core values of enact, enable, encourage, entrust and ensure. 'enHealth' reflects a culture that does what it says. The term enHealth and the enHealth logo have been developed as brief and easily identifiable representations of environmental health and the philosophy behind its management.