Journal of epidemiology and community health, Jan 12, 2018
The impacts of global environmental change have precipitated numerous approaches that connect the... more The impacts of global environmental change have precipitated numerous approaches that connect the health of ecosystems, non-human organisms and humans. However, the proliferation of approaches can lead to confusion due to overlaps in terminology, ideas and foci. Recognising the need for clarity, this paper provides a guide to seven field developments in environmental public health research and practice: occupational and environmental health; political ecology of health; environmental justice; ecohealth; One Health; ecological public health; and planetary health. Field developments are defined in terms of their uniqueness from one another, are historically situated, and core texts or journals are highlighted. The paper ends by discussing some of the intersecting features across field developments, and considers opportunities created through such convergence. This field guide will be useful for those seeking to build a next generation of integrative research, policy, education and act...
Work that addresses the cumulative impacts of resource extraction on environment, community, and ... more Work that addresses the cumulative impacts of resource extraction on environment, community, and health is necessarily large in scope. This paper presents experiences from initiating research at this intersection and explores implications for the ambitious, integrative agenda of planetary health. The purpose is to outline origins, design features, and preliminary insights from our intersectoral and international project, based in Canada and titled the “Environment, Community, Health Observatory” (ECHO) Network. With a clear emphasis on rural, remote, and Indigenous communities, environments, and health, the ECHO Network is designed to answer the question: How can an Environment, Community, Health Observatory Network support the integrative tools and processes required to improve understanding and response to the cumulative health impacts of resource development? The Network is informed by four regional cases across Canada where we employ a framework and an approach grounded in obser...
Political ecology pushes back against the apolitical and ahistorical ecologies frequently found i... more Political ecology pushes back against the apolitical and ahistorical ecologies frequently found in mainstream scientific accounts of nature and the environment, and has increasingly focused on how scientific knowledge is 'socially constructed.' In this article, we argue for political ecological engagement with the highly influential knowledge-to-action (KTA) movement in science about health and the environment. We introduce KTA using results of a survey conducted under the auspices of a Canada-Latin America-Caribbean 'ecosystem approaches to health' (ecohealth) collaboration, and then narrow our focus to a single illustrative ecohealth project, dealing with the health impacts of small-scale gold mining in southwestern Ecuador. We employ an ecology of knowledge framework for integrating insights from science and technology studies, illustrating the interacting actors, material artifacts, institutions and discourses involved in not only the generation but also the application of health-environment science. The origins of ecohealth research in the Americas reflect interacting epistemological and political factors, as sophisticated, complex systemic analyses of health-environment interactions occurred amidst increasing neoliberalization of knowledge production. Simultaneously, corporate actors such as large mining companies influenced both the distribution of health-damaging environmental conditions in the Americas, and the ways in which they were studied. This analysis motivates our advocacy of specifically political ecologies of health-environment knowledge, in which inequitable power dynamics and non-human actors are foregrounded in studies of the social production and application of science. The political ecology of knowledge framework that we envision would allow for simultaneous consideration of how societal contexts influence scientific knowledge production, and how the resulting knowledge can be better applied to protect the health of communities facing environmental injustice.
Canadian journal of public health = Revue canadienne de santé publique
The intimate interdependence of human health and the ecosystems in which we are embedded is now a... more The intimate interdependence of human health and the ecosystems in which we are embedded is now a commonplace observation. For much of the history of public health, this was not so obvious. After over a century of focus on diseases, their biologic causes and the correction of exposures (clean water and air) and facilitation of responses (immunizations and nutrition), public health discourse shifted to embrace the concept of determinants of health as extending to social, economic and environmental realms. This moved the discourse and science of public health into an unprecedented level of complexity just as public concern about the environment heightened. To address multifactorial, dynamic impacts on health, a new paradigm was needed which would overcome the separation of humans and ecosystems. Ecosystem approaches to health arose in the 1990s from a rich background of intellectual ferment as Canada wrestled with diverse problems ranging from Great Lakes contamination to zoonotic dis...
Renewed effort to understand the social-ecological context of health is drawing attention to the ... more Renewed effort to understand the social-ecological context of health is drawing attention to the dynamics of land and water resources and their combined influence on the determinants of health. A new area of research, education and policy is emerging that focuses on the land-water-health nexus: this orientation is applicable from small wetlands through to large-scale watersheds or river basins, and draws attention to the benefits of combined land and water governance, as well as the interrelated implications for health, ecological and societal concerns. Informed by research precedents, imperatives and collaborations emerging in Canada and parts of Oceania, this review profiles three integrative, applied approaches that are bringing attention to the importance the land-water-health nexus within the Pacific Basin: wetlands and watersheds as intersectoral settings to address land-water-health dynamics; tools to integrate health, ecological and societal dynamics at the land-water-health...
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2015
This article highlights contributions that can be made to the public health field by incorporatin... more This article highlights contributions that can be made to the public health field by incorporating "ecosystem approaches to health" to tackle future environmental and health challenges at a regional level. This qualitative research reviews attitudes and understandings of the relationship between public health and the environment and the priorities, aspirations and challenges of a newly established group (the Oceania EcoHealth Chapter) who are attempting to promote these principles. Ten semi-structured interviews with Oceania EcoHealth Chapter members highlighted the important role such groups can play in informing organisations working in the Oceania region to improve both public health and environmental outcomes simultaneously. Participants of this study emphasise the need to elevate Indigenous knowledge in Oceania and the role regional groups play in this regard. They also emphasis that regional advocacy and ecosystem approaches to health could bypass silos in knowledge and disciplinary divides, with groups like the Oceania EcoHealth Chapter acting as a mechanism for knowledge exchange, engagement, and action at a regional level with its ability to bridge the gap between environmental stewardship and public health.
The marine environment provides significant benefits to many local communities. Pressure to devel... more The marine environment provides significant benefits to many local communities. Pressure to develop coastal waterways worldwide creates an urgent need for tools to locate marine spaces that have important social or ecological values, and to quantify their relative importance. The primary objective of this study was to develop, apply and critically assess a tool to identify important social-ecological hotspots in the marine environment. The study was conducted in a typical coastal community in northern British Columbia, Canada. This expert-informed GIS, or xGIS, tool used a survey instrument to draw on the knowledge of local experts from a range of backgrounds with respect to a series of 12 social-ecological value attributes, such as biodiversity, cultural and economic values. We identified approximately 1500 polygons on marine maps and assigned relative values to them using a token distribution exercise. A series of spatial statistical analyses were performed to locate and quantify ...
Available online at: https://www.novapublishers.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=22894. T... more Available online at: https://www.novapublishers.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=22894. This paper argues that the health and wellbeing of Indigenous children, their communities, and ultimately their nations, arises from connection with the land and from cultural strengths linked with this connectivity. We provide critical reflection on contemporary discussions about impacts that climate change will have on the social, ecological, cultural and historical determinants of health of Indigenous children in Canada. Our analysis highlights overlooked opportunities, perspectives and priorities that demand attention in order to prevent climate change from exacerbating the already unacceptable health inequities experienced by Aboriginal children across Canada.
Using epidemiologic time-series analysis, we examine associations between three hydroclimatic var... more Using epidemiologic time-series analysis, we examine associations between three hydroclimatic variables (temperature, precipitation, and streamflow) and waterborne acute gastro-intestinal illness (AGI) in two communities in the province of British Columbia (BC), Canada. The communities were selected to represent the major hydroclimatic regimes that characterize BC: rainfall-dominated and snowmelt-dominated. Our results show that the number of monthly cases of AGI increased with increasing temperature, precipitation, and streamflow in the same month in the context of a rainfall-dominated regime, and with increasing streamflow in the previous month in the context of a snowfall-dominated regime. These results suggest that hydroclimatology plays a role in driving the occurrence and variability of AGI in these settings. Further, this study highlights that the nature and magnitude of the effects of hydroclimatic variability on AGI are different in the context of a snowfall-dominated regim...
The Fraser River is by volume the largest Canadian waterway flowing to the Pacific Ocean and rema... more The Fraser River is by volume the largest Canadian waterway flowing to the Pacific Ocean and remains largely unaffected by flow regulation. The Fraser River Basin (FRB) spans across 234,000 square kilometers or one quarter of British Columbia, Canada and bears a magnificent amount of natural and human heritage and the cultural and linguistic diversity of this region encompasses various First Nations peoples who use the Fraser River and its tributaries as waterways and for sustenance. This presentation will focus on the role of climate oscillations on the 1910-2009 variability and trends in annual streamflow at 141 sites across the FRB of British Columbia (BC), Canada. Our analyses reveal high runoff rates and low interannual variability in alpine and coastal rivers and low runoff rates and high interannual variability in streams on BC's interior plateau. Large-scale climate teleconnections such as El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), in conj...
Journal of epidemiology and community health, Jan 12, 2018
The impacts of global environmental change have precipitated numerous approaches that connect the... more The impacts of global environmental change have precipitated numerous approaches that connect the health of ecosystems, non-human organisms and humans. However, the proliferation of approaches can lead to confusion due to overlaps in terminology, ideas and foci. Recognising the need for clarity, this paper provides a guide to seven field developments in environmental public health research and practice: occupational and environmental health; political ecology of health; environmental justice; ecohealth; One Health; ecological public health; and planetary health. Field developments are defined in terms of their uniqueness from one another, are historically situated, and core texts or journals are highlighted. The paper ends by discussing some of the intersecting features across field developments, and considers opportunities created through such convergence. This field guide will be useful for those seeking to build a next generation of integrative research, policy, education and act...
Work that addresses the cumulative impacts of resource extraction on environment, community, and ... more Work that addresses the cumulative impacts of resource extraction on environment, community, and health is necessarily large in scope. This paper presents experiences from initiating research at this intersection and explores implications for the ambitious, integrative agenda of planetary health. The purpose is to outline origins, design features, and preliminary insights from our intersectoral and international project, based in Canada and titled the “Environment, Community, Health Observatory” (ECHO) Network. With a clear emphasis on rural, remote, and Indigenous communities, environments, and health, the ECHO Network is designed to answer the question: How can an Environment, Community, Health Observatory Network support the integrative tools and processes required to improve understanding and response to the cumulative health impacts of resource development? The Network is informed by four regional cases across Canada where we employ a framework and an approach grounded in obser...
Political ecology pushes back against the apolitical and ahistorical ecologies frequently found i... more Political ecology pushes back against the apolitical and ahistorical ecologies frequently found in mainstream scientific accounts of nature and the environment, and has increasingly focused on how scientific knowledge is 'socially constructed.' In this article, we argue for political ecological engagement with the highly influential knowledge-to-action (KTA) movement in science about health and the environment. We introduce KTA using results of a survey conducted under the auspices of a Canada-Latin America-Caribbean 'ecosystem approaches to health' (ecohealth) collaboration, and then narrow our focus to a single illustrative ecohealth project, dealing with the health impacts of small-scale gold mining in southwestern Ecuador. We employ an ecology of knowledge framework for integrating insights from science and technology studies, illustrating the interacting actors, material artifacts, institutions and discourses involved in not only the generation but also the application of health-environment science. The origins of ecohealth research in the Americas reflect interacting epistemological and political factors, as sophisticated, complex systemic analyses of health-environment interactions occurred amidst increasing neoliberalization of knowledge production. Simultaneously, corporate actors such as large mining companies influenced both the distribution of health-damaging environmental conditions in the Americas, and the ways in which they were studied. This analysis motivates our advocacy of specifically political ecologies of health-environment knowledge, in which inequitable power dynamics and non-human actors are foregrounded in studies of the social production and application of science. The political ecology of knowledge framework that we envision would allow for simultaneous consideration of how societal contexts influence scientific knowledge production, and how the resulting knowledge can be better applied to protect the health of communities facing environmental injustice.
Canadian journal of public health = Revue canadienne de santé publique
The intimate interdependence of human health and the ecosystems in which we are embedded is now a... more The intimate interdependence of human health and the ecosystems in which we are embedded is now a commonplace observation. For much of the history of public health, this was not so obvious. After over a century of focus on diseases, their biologic causes and the correction of exposures (clean water and air) and facilitation of responses (immunizations and nutrition), public health discourse shifted to embrace the concept of determinants of health as extending to social, economic and environmental realms. This moved the discourse and science of public health into an unprecedented level of complexity just as public concern about the environment heightened. To address multifactorial, dynamic impacts on health, a new paradigm was needed which would overcome the separation of humans and ecosystems. Ecosystem approaches to health arose in the 1990s from a rich background of intellectual ferment as Canada wrestled with diverse problems ranging from Great Lakes contamination to zoonotic dis...
Renewed effort to understand the social-ecological context of health is drawing attention to the ... more Renewed effort to understand the social-ecological context of health is drawing attention to the dynamics of land and water resources and their combined influence on the determinants of health. A new area of research, education and policy is emerging that focuses on the land-water-health nexus: this orientation is applicable from small wetlands through to large-scale watersheds or river basins, and draws attention to the benefits of combined land and water governance, as well as the interrelated implications for health, ecological and societal concerns. Informed by research precedents, imperatives and collaborations emerging in Canada and parts of Oceania, this review profiles three integrative, applied approaches that are bringing attention to the importance the land-water-health nexus within the Pacific Basin: wetlands and watersheds as intersectoral settings to address land-water-health dynamics; tools to integrate health, ecological and societal dynamics at the land-water-health...
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2015
This article highlights contributions that can be made to the public health field by incorporatin... more This article highlights contributions that can be made to the public health field by incorporating "ecosystem approaches to health" to tackle future environmental and health challenges at a regional level. This qualitative research reviews attitudes and understandings of the relationship between public health and the environment and the priorities, aspirations and challenges of a newly established group (the Oceania EcoHealth Chapter) who are attempting to promote these principles. Ten semi-structured interviews with Oceania EcoHealth Chapter members highlighted the important role such groups can play in informing organisations working in the Oceania region to improve both public health and environmental outcomes simultaneously. Participants of this study emphasise the need to elevate Indigenous knowledge in Oceania and the role regional groups play in this regard. They also emphasis that regional advocacy and ecosystem approaches to health could bypass silos in knowledge and disciplinary divides, with groups like the Oceania EcoHealth Chapter acting as a mechanism for knowledge exchange, engagement, and action at a regional level with its ability to bridge the gap between environmental stewardship and public health.
The marine environment provides significant benefits to many local communities. Pressure to devel... more The marine environment provides significant benefits to many local communities. Pressure to develop coastal waterways worldwide creates an urgent need for tools to locate marine spaces that have important social or ecological values, and to quantify their relative importance. The primary objective of this study was to develop, apply and critically assess a tool to identify important social-ecological hotspots in the marine environment. The study was conducted in a typical coastal community in northern British Columbia, Canada. This expert-informed GIS, or xGIS, tool used a survey instrument to draw on the knowledge of local experts from a range of backgrounds with respect to a series of 12 social-ecological value attributes, such as biodiversity, cultural and economic values. We identified approximately 1500 polygons on marine maps and assigned relative values to them using a token distribution exercise. A series of spatial statistical analyses were performed to locate and quantify ...
Available online at: https://www.novapublishers.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=22894. T... more Available online at: https://www.novapublishers.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=22894. This paper argues that the health and wellbeing of Indigenous children, their communities, and ultimately their nations, arises from connection with the land and from cultural strengths linked with this connectivity. We provide critical reflection on contemporary discussions about impacts that climate change will have on the social, ecological, cultural and historical determinants of health of Indigenous children in Canada. Our analysis highlights overlooked opportunities, perspectives and priorities that demand attention in order to prevent climate change from exacerbating the already unacceptable health inequities experienced by Aboriginal children across Canada.
Using epidemiologic time-series analysis, we examine associations between three hydroclimatic var... more Using epidemiologic time-series analysis, we examine associations between three hydroclimatic variables (temperature, precipitation, and streamflow) and waterborne acute gastro-intestinal illness (AGI) in two communities in the province of British Columbia (BC), Canada. The communities were selected to represent the major hydroclimatic regimes that characterize BC: rainfall-dominated and snowmelt-dominated. Our results show that the number of monthly cases of AGI increased with increasing temperature, precipitation, and streamflow in the same month in the context of a rainfall-dominated regime, and with increasing streamflow in the previous month in the context of a snowfall-dominated regime. These results suggest that hydroclimatology plays a role in driving the occurrence and variability of AGI in these settings. Further, this study highlights that the nature and magnitude of the effects of hydroclimatic variability on AGI are different in the context of a snowfall-dominated regim...
The Fraser River is by volume the largest Canadian waterway flowing to the Pacific Ocean and rema... more The Fraser River is by volume the largest Canadian waterway flowing to the Pacific Ocean and remains largely unaffected by flow regulation. The Fraser River Basin (FRB) spans across 234,000 square kilometers or one quarter of British Columbia, Canada and bears a magnificent amount of natural and human heritage and the cultural and linguistic diversity of this region encompasses various First Nations peoples who use the Fraser River and its tributaries as waterways and for sustenance. This presentation will focus on the role of climate oscillations on the 1910-2009 variability and trends in annual streamflow at 141 sites across the FRB of British Columbia (BC), Canada. Our analyses reveal high runoff rates and low interannual variability in alpine and coastal rivers and low runoff rates and high interannual variability in streams on BC's interior plateau. Large-scale climate teleconnections such as El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), in conj...
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Papers by Margot Parkes