Thanks to a generous Wildfire grant, I was able to attend the 2013 Conference for the Environment and Health held in Basel, Switzerland in August.\u00a0 This conference brought together experts from across the world to discuss issues relating to the impact of the environment and climate change on human health. \u00a0I attended the conference in order to give an oral platform on \u201cPreparing rural GPs and health services for climate change and extreme weather\u201d which was research completed as a part of my Bachelor of Medical Science (Honours).<\/p>\n
Basel is a city embracing environmentally friendly technologies and uses 100% renewable energy.\u00a0 There is a strong focus on environmental preservation and strategies to minimise the impacts of the city on the environment.\u00a0 With efficient public transport, cyclist friendly roads, and the River Rhine which is so clean that swimming is a popular local and tourist activity (a big change from the Yarra!), Basel is a fitting city to host such a conference.\u00a0 Over 1700 clinicians, researchers and scientist from 70 countries across the globe converged on Basel for the conference week.<\/p>\n
As the conference for the International Society of Environmental Epidemiology, International Society for Indoor Air Quality and the International Society for Exposure Sciences, the topics discussed at the conference were broad and reflected the wide scope of impacts that the environment has on human health.<\/p>\n
The conference was a valuable opportunity to learn about other research being done internationally regarding the environment and health.\u00a0 It was also particularly interesting to hear about this research in a rural context, from both researchers based in Australia and elsewhere.\u00a0 It offered the potential to learn from other projects, and also to receive suggestions on further directions for this research in Australia, with particular relevance to rural health. \u00a0It was fantastic to be able to meet people whose work and ideas had helped shape how I structured the research I did for my BMedSci.\u00a0 There was a strong representation of Australian researchers from across different universities and it was inspiring to meet some of these people working in an Australian context.<\/p>\n
The research I presented, \u201cPreparing rural GPs and health services for climate change and extreme weather\u201d was based in the South West of New South Wales.\u00a0 The project explored the views of rural GPs as to the needs for preparing rural health services for climate change and extreme weather events.\u00a0 It also sought to identify the perceptions of rural GPs on their role as advocates in their communities for extreme weather and climate change issues, both in relation to community and patient engagement, and in the forward planning of rural health services.<\/p>\n
Attending the Conference for the Environment and Health was a valuable learning experience and I would like to thank Wildfire for the support of their grants program.<\/p>\n
Rachael Purcell<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Thanks to a generous Wildfire grant, I was able to attend the 2013 Conference for the Environment and Health held in Basel, Switzerland in August.\u00a0 This conference brought together experts from across the world to discuss issues relating to the impact of the environment and climate change on human health. \u00a0I attended the conference in […]<\/p>\n Read More...<\/a>","protected":false},"author":797,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[773,1581,154,2082],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.monash.edu\/rural-health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2040"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.monash.edu\/rural-health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.monash.edu\/rural-health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.monash.edu\/rural-health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/797"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.monash.edu\/rural-health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2040"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.monash.edu\/rural-health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2040\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2136,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.monash.edu\/rural-health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2040\/revisions\/2136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.monash.edu\/rural-health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.monash.edu\/rural-health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.monash.edu\/rural-health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}