Public Health

Flying over Prudhoe Bay, Alaska

November 30, 2007

I can see the outlines below of water and glaciers, and it leads me to think about global warming, water and the future of public health. I hope everyone will read the latest issue of Carolina Public Health cover to cover. It is a magnificent tour de force that highlights the challenges of providing safe water to a world in need and catalogues and tells the story of the magnificent work our faculty members, especially those in Environmental Sciences and Engineering and the Institute for the Environment and Marine Sciences, students and staff are doing in this area.

The stories tell an interdisciplinary, cautionary tale, of people from public health, marine sciences, policy, economics and so much more, working together to solve problems that confront our civilization, indeed, our planet.

Being dean opened me up to the huge problems associated with water, something many of us have taken for granted for far too long. We turned on the shower and water flowed. Now, everywhere we turn, there are cautions and constraints regarding our use of water.

Water is public health. More than 1 billion people in the world lack access to safe water. Lack of access to safe water kills 4,000 children every day, according to the UNICEF. Why don’t we get incensed about these preventable deaths? Because they happen to people who are poor and lack a loud voice?

While water is a vital resource without which we cannot survive as a species or planet, funding for water research is virtually an orphan, and our scientists must cobble together a little from here and a little from somewhere else.

Yet, the average person is starting to talk about water the way they talk about the weather. I notice it now with cab drivers and flight attendants, even the person on duty at the Department of Motor Vehicles office the other day (YES!). That’s a paradigm shift! People are starting to get that it’s a problem. And our school is right in the midst of it all, where it has been for more than 60 years, doing the fundamental research, translating it and making a difference.

I’d like to see more of my behavioral science colleagues thinking about the science of water-related behavior change. It is a perfect case study of the need for the social ecologic model (literally!). We need policy and organizational changes, behavior change from organizations, like big and small employers, and then all of us, each of us must think about water differently. We must change our individual behaviors and our collective ones as well.

This is a place where students can make a huge difference that will really matter. If I were a student today, it’s a problem I would consider addressing.

I heard a great interview on BBC Saturday morning November 10. They interviewed a reporter who’d helped to start a Web site called Circle of Blue that is created by journalists who tell fascinating stories, some about individuals and water. The pictures are astonishing. Check out http://www.circleofblue.org/.


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The views expressed in this blog are Barbara Rimer’s alone and do not represent the views and policies of The University of North Carolina or the Gillings School.