Hooray for the National Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments!

By Mark D. Marotta

Somewhere along the line, my duties here at Valley Forge Press, which brings you Therapy Times, grew to include coming up with environmentally-themed articles for its sister publication, rt image.

Not sure how that happened, but it did, for better or worse. So far, Therapy Times had been lucky in escaping my clutches as a nag on going green.

That%u219s about to change with this blog. While poking around on Therapy Times just the other day, I came upon a news item from the University of Maryland-Baltimore about the National Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments (ANHE).

The press release indicates that the ANHE was formed in December 2008 and is headquartered in College Park, Md. Its mission is to promote healthy people and healthy environments by educating and leading the nursing profession, advancing research, incorporating evidence based practice and influencing policy.

To that end, ANHE has developed a strategic plan to integrate environmental health into nursing education, practice, research, and advocacy. Members have developed a curriculum that they are encouraging nursing schools to adopt to foster knowledge about environmental health.

In the field of policy, the alliance is working in tandem with other groups on issues related to sustainable agriculture and climate change. For more information about the group, visit its Web site.

That all sounds pretty good to me. Do any readers know of similar organizations operating in their own therapy fields? If so, let us know. You might just give me an idea for another "green" topic to bring up on Therapy Times.

For better or worse.