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• Technology is the knowledge and application of tools, machines, materials, and processes to solve human problems.
• Informatics is the science encompassing information and computer science, studying information's process, management, and retrieval.
• Health informatics is a discipline where health data are stored, analyzed, and disseminated using information and communication technology.

Colonialism

• Colonialism involves institutions and policies developed by European imperial and Euro-American settlers regarding Indigenous peoples.
• Reserve systems, governance structures, historical trauma, and residential schools are elements of colonialism.
• Intergenerational trauma and cultural genocide are consequences of colonialism.

Why Nurses Should Know About Environmental Health

• Environmental factors affect health.
• Nurses play an important role in health promotion and protection.
• Nurses are the largest professional group working in healthcare.
• Nurses are part of emergency response and disaster management teams.

Nursing Approaches to Environmental Issues

• Consequences of hazardous environments are experienced unequally, disproportionately affecting vulnerable groups like people of color and the economically disadvantaged.
• Nurses should assist these vulnerable aggregates.
• Nurses must consider the relationship between non-health policies and health, using critical questions to frame the problem and assist in strategies.
• Examples of critical questions: Who controls resources? Whose interests are being served?
• Nurses need to join with communities to ask questions.
• Nurses can question communities to assist them to reflect on the most important health issues.
• It is important to provide support, information, and expertise to groups to assist them in meeting goals for environmental change through community involvement.
• Approach existing organizations, family and friendship networks to mobilize coalitions.
• Groups work with nurses to expose hazards, plan actions, report abuses, and secure resources.
• Nurses are crucial in helping communities connect with larger and more powerful organizations.
• Collective strategies include consciousness raising, educational forums, seminars, community needs assessments, and research dissemination.

Levels of Prevention

• Primary prevention includes counseling women of child-bearing age about potential risks.
• Primary prevention involves supporting the development of exposure standards.
• Primary prevention includes advocating for safe air, water, and soil, and educating about the dangers of sun exposure.
• Secondary prevention includes assessing homes, schools, worksites, and communities for environmental hazards, reviewing water and soil results, and monitoring air quality reports.
• Tertiary prevention includes supporting the cleanup of toxic waste sites and referring homeowners to programs for the removal of lead and asbestos.

Environmental Health Hazards

• Environmental issues include air, water, soil/surface, food, noise, population pressures, and climate.

Air Pollution and Climate Concerns

• Air pollution and climate concerns include increasing carbon dioxide levels, leading to the greenhouse effect and acid rain.
• Radioactive substances and ozone depletion from chlorofluorocarbons(CFCs) are also air pollution and climate concerns.
• Exposure to UV-B radiation causes sunburn, skin cancer, immune system depression, and increased risk of cataracts.
• Damage to phytoplankton and other critical organisms in the food chain are effects of air pollution and climate change.

Indoor Air Pollution

• Sick Building Syndrome symptoms include irritation to the eyes, nose, and throat, and may also include mental fatigue, headaches, dizziness, frequent URIs, and hypersensitivity reactions.
• Environmental Tobacco Smoke(ETS) effects air quality, and may be affected by public smoking bans.
• Indigenous lands may have different requirements, and may have exemptions available for cigar lounges in AB and PQ and ventilated smoking rooms.
• Environmental tobacco smoke can have long term health effects.

Water Quality Concerns

• Common sewage wastes oxygen needed by aquatic plants & animal life which can lead to aquatic death & GI tract infectious diseases.
• Synthetic chemicals, such as cleaning agents and pesticides, are poisonous to aquatic life, have an unpleasant taste, and can cause possible disease.
• Oil spills remain a concern, especially for many communities in Canada, and it continues to be a major concern among Indigenous communities.

Soil Pollution

• Pesticides can have many toxic effects, including forgetfulness, short attention span, anxiety, depression, hyperirritability, insomnia, and skin disease.
• Surface pollution results from open dumps and landfills, incineration, lead poisoning, and hazardous waste disposal.
• Soil contaminants include dioxins, PCBs, mercury, and arsenic.

Food Pollution

• Food additives may cause GI, respiratory, neurologic, skeletal, and skin disorders.
• Antibiotic and hormone additive residues in livestock can cause allergies and destruction of normal flora in the body, causing an increased susceptibility to infection.
• Pesticides contribute to food pollution.

Noise Pollution

• 55 decibels can cause hearing damage.

• 130 pain is caused by excess noise.

• Noise pollution exposure can lead to many health risks and may require intervention.

Weight Bias

• Weight bias is defined as negative attitudes toward others because of their weight.
• Weight stigma refers to stereotypes and labels assigned to people who have obesity.
• Weight discrimination refers to actions against people who have obesity that cause social exclusion and inequities.
• Weight bias and discrimination are widespread.
• Elementary school kids with obesity are 63% more likely to be bullied.
• 54% of adults with obesity report being stigmatized by coworkers.
• 64% of adults with obesity report experiencing weight bias from a healthcare professional.
• 72% of images and 77% of videos stigmatize persons with obesity.

Weight Stigma and Bias

• Weight stigma is when body size, particularly weight higher than "normal", is devalued in a social context.
• Weight bias is negative attitudes about weight, often resulting in false and negative stereotypes, leading to unequal or unfair treatment.

Factors Contributing to Weight Bias

• Discourses of obesity include focus on weight over health and promoting the valuing of thinness.
• Discourses of obesity include conflating thinness and health, constructing obesity as a disease and reinforcing judgment based upon weight.
• Societal messages support that obesity is the mark of a defective person.
• Obesity is portrayed in negative ways through media, health promotion policy/campaigns.

Weight Bias in Health Care

• Practicing professionals like nurses, physicians, dieticians, and psychologists may hold weight biases.
• Students of health professions may also exhibit weight bias, considering obese patients uncompliant, lazy, and less motivated.