Shahzeen Attari, an associate professor at the Paul H. O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs, was part of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine committee’s report, “Transforming EPA Science to Meet Today’s and Tomorrow’s Challenges,” which outlined ways the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Research and Development can shift to a systems-based approach to provide a substantially broader and better integrated approach to environmental protection.
The report calls for the application of a One Environment-One Health approach to all aspects of ORD work, including providing recommendations on how ORD might consider incorporating emerging science and systems thinking into agency research planning. It also identifies a number of high-priority recommendations for ORD to pursue in taking advantage of a broad range of advanced tools, in concert with collaborators in other federal agencies and the broader scientific community.
A One Environment-One Health approach recognizes the connection between the health of humans and the health of animals and the shared environment, and the NASEM committee’s report suggested that using the approach would better serve the ORD and the EPA’s ability to make policy decisions going forward. The report also recognized that shifting to the systems-based approach would require several steps to fully implement, and it recommended making changes over a multi-year period.
“Transforming EPA Science to Meet Today’s and Tomorrow’s Challenges” is available at the National Academies website.
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