Building trust requires a capacity for shaping common agendas. Any agenda for the New Millennium must address both short and long term issues. Dr. Soskolne's presentation spoke to the essential linkages between environmental or ecological integrity and public health. Measurement and relationship of ecological integrity and degradation of human health is essential. Solutions must be multi-disciplinary.
International discourse is urgent and necessary.
Donna Mergler Phd. Dr. Mergler presented a model for understanding the relation between environmental contaminants and human health and well-being, with a view to developing strategies for prevention intervention based on an ecosystem approach to human health. Dr. Judith Guernsey Department of Community Health and Epidemiology, Dalhousie University Dr. Guernsey argued that while there has been much enthusiasm expressed for new research in population health, most of the dialogue and the funding is directed toward the social and cultural influences and not towards health and the physical environment. These issues are moving us into the third paradigm of public health. The first two, sanitation and disease control, were possibly more straight forward in that infrastructure, in the first case, and technology, in the second case, could be applied to well defined problems with immediate results.