This past year’s pandemic and racial reckoning has made clear lawmakers and healthcare communities must adapt to a paradigm shift: The natural and built worlds around us can harm our health, and some communities of Michiganders are adversely affected by them.
Homes can have lead. Congested roads can cut through neighborhoods. Former factories can leak chemicals into drinking water. Parks and nature can be sparse nearby. Each reality can hurt us in ways that are minor and that are devastating, and those that are very young, very old, disabled, immunocompromised, Black or Brown bear the brunt are more likely to bear the brunt of a bad environment.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. We can help our environment help us. Tina Reynolds and Kindra Weid have been working to do this for years.
Tina is MEC’s environmental health director. Kindra is a registered nurse at St. Joseph Mercy Hospital- Chelsea's medical intensive care. Both collectively work on more than a dozen coalitions with advocates, physicians and environmental experts bent on improving public health. Kindra and Tina serve as bridges between these three groups, connecting them to one another and to policymakers and healthcare leaders to improve the root cause of so many ailments: where and how we live.
Join Tina, Kindra and MEC President & CEO Conan Smith this Friday as they discuss the power coalitions have in educating leaders and uplifting advocates in the fight for good environmental health policy.
The Capitol Connection webinar series is generously sponsored by Steve and Judy Dobson.