Emancipatory Policies for Environmental Health

Our current featured article addresses one of the most pressing issues of our time – environmental health.  The article is titled “Environmental Health: Advancing Emancipatory Policies for the Common Good,” authored by Sarah K. Valentine-Maher, MSN, RN,

Sarah Valentine-Maher

FNP; Patricia G. Butterfield, PhD, RN, FAAN; and Gary Laustsen, PhD, RN, FNP, FAANP, FAAN.  The article is available at no cost while it is featured on the ANS website.  Authors Valentine-Maher and Butterfield  talk about their work in this video we recorded for ANS blog followers; we welcome your comments below!

Message from Sarah Valentine-Maher:

Nurses hold a great potential to improve human wellbeing by addressing the environment that determines health.  Many of us will recognize this ethos within nursing. Yet, our potential to address one of the major determinants of health, the integrity of the natural environment, is not yet actualized.  In the article “Environmental Health: Advancing Emancipatory Policies for the Common Good” we point towards a way forward. Overviews of contextual issues and specific environmental concerns are paired with recommendations for nurses’ actions.

The discussion in the video posted here touches on an overview of the paper as well as the themes of; ‘why nursing and environmental health’ and the emancipatory implications of such work.