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Combo Disaster and Environmental Injustice

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Join us for the Disaster STS Network’s Fall 2021 virtual tour of Louisiana's Cancer Alley, a corridor of chemical plants along the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans with shockin

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josh.correira

One major point outlined in the article is the way that disease outbreaks have been viewed and prepared for has changed over the past few centuries. It started out in the view of public health where social factors like sanitation and clean water were valued but then shifted towards preparedness after outbreaks of various influenza viruses seemed to not fit the paradigm of public health.

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josh.correira
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The organization has the infrastructure of the Federal government, however they operate in areas that are more rural, including Alaska and the Southwest where environmental issues such as clean drinking water can be present, which they address in their community health approach. All members also are allowed access to the internet, which I'm assuming is available at each of their locations.

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josh.correira

The author is Sonja D. Schmid who is a professor of Science and Technology in Society at Virginia Tech. Her area of expertise is the social aspect of science and technology, esp. during the Cold War, as well as science and technology policy, science and democracy, qualitative studies of risk, energy policy, and nuclear emergency response. As a professor and researcher she has does relevant studies on Fukushima and nuclear disasters relevant to the DSTS network. One such article titled "The unbearable ambiguity of knowing: making sense of Fukushima" is cited below:

Schmid, Sonja D. "The Unbearable Ambiguity of Knowing: Making Sense of Fukushima." Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. N.p., 2013. Web.

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josh.correira

“Yet risk has never been determined solely by individual behavior: susceptibility to infection and poor outcomes is aggravated by social factors such as poverty, gender inequality, and racism”

“we have transplanted and adapted the “PIH model” of care, which was designed in rural Haiti to prevent the embodiment of poverty and social inequalities as excess mortality due to AIDS, TB, malaria, and other diseases of poverty”

“Physicians can rightly note that structural interventions are “not our job.” Yet, since structural interventions might arguably have a greater impact on disease control than do conventional clinical interventions, we would do well to pay heed to them.”