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Integrating Human Health and Environmental Health into the DPSIR Framework: A Tool to Identify Research Opportunities for Sustainable and Healthy Communities
Citation:
YEE, S. H., P. BRADLEY, W. S. FISHER, S. P. DARNEY, J. J. QUACKENBOSS, E. D. JOHNSON, J. BOUSQUIN, P. MURPHY, AND L. JACKSON. Integrating Human Health and Environmental Health into the DPSIR Framework: A Tool to Identify Research Opportunities for Sustainable and Healthy Communities. EcoHealth. Springer, New York, NY, 9(4):411-426, (2012).
Impact/Purpose:
This research presents a systems framework for integrating social, economic, environmental, and public health research toward development of the information, methods, and tools to evaluate the sustainability and health of communities under alternative scenarios.
Description:
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has recently realigned its research enterprise around the concept of sustainability. Scientists from across multiple disciplines have a role to play in contributing the information, methods, and tools to more fully understand the long-term impacts of decisions on the social and economic sustainability of communities. Successful integration of individual scientific efforts will depend on a shift in thinking to organize them within the context of a broader system. Conceptual frameworks provide one approach for organizing information and thinking within a systems context, and a framework for sustainability research should incorporate both environmental health and human health as social and economic attributes. We used the Driving forces – Pressures – State – Impact – Response (DPSIR) framework as a basis for integrating social, cultural, and economic aspects of environmental and human health into a single framework. To make the framework broadly applicable to sustainability research planning, we provide a hierarchical system of DPSIR keywords and guidelines for use as a communication tool. The applicability of the integrated framework was first tested on a public health issue, and then applied at a science planning workshop to identify opportunities for sustainable and healthy communities research. We conclude that an integrated systems framework has many potential roles in science planning, including identifying key issues, visualizing interactions within the system, identifying research gaps, organizing information, developing computational models, and identifying indicators.