Environmental Health Policy in a Time of Change

In Australia, as elsewhere, environmental health policy has only recently emerged from being in the background, where it has been has been subsumed under more general public health and environmental policies, into the policy foreground where it is the primary vehicle for responding to the increasing environmental risks to health (enHealth Council, 2000 and Environmental Health Commission, 1997). Global changes to the environmental systems of the planet; and national increases in urban pollution and water and soil degradation, are requiring a strategic policy response. In 1999, the first National Environmental Health Strategy (NEHS) was formally accredited by federal and state governments, and acknowledged by a formal budget allocation, thus establishing a public policy direction for Environmental Health in Australia for the first time (enHealth Council, 1999). This chapter explores the inauguration of environmental health policy in relation to its key stakeholders (the community, the professions, those in government, and those with the task of integrating environment and health), in the light of the new human/environment relationships of the 21st century