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Health & Your Environment
Proper environmental management is the key to avoiding the quarter of all preventable illnesses which are directly caused by environmental factors. The environment influences our health in many ways — through exposures to physical, chemical and biological risk factors, and through related changes in our behaviour in response to those factors. |
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Working with key partners, BCCDC works to reduce the negative impacts of environmental exposures on the health of British Columbians through research, surveillance, monitoring, epidemiological investigations, and emergency planning.
The Centre focuses on the physical, chemical, and biological factors external to a person, and all the related factors impacting behaviours.
The BCCDC is closely linked to BC universities and many BCCDC staff teach courses and supervise students undertaking studies in environmental health. The research done by BCCDC staff is based on the problems we address every day through the part we play in the public health system.
The BCCDC also hosts the National Collaborating Centre for Environmental Health (NCCCEH). The NCCEH is one of six centres created to foster linkages within the public health community. The centres are funded by the Public Health Agency of Canada through the National Collaborating Centres for Public Health program. The NCCEH's focus is environmental health, defined initially as services and programs currently delivered by regional and local health agencies in Canada. Their function is to: synthesize, translate, and exchange knowledge; identify gaps in research and practice knowledge; and build capacity through networks of environmental health practitioners, policy-makers, and researchers. Review, Guidance and Summary Documents prepared by the NCCEH.
Last Updated: May 16, 2013
