(Washington, DC) Health Care Without Harm is pleased to announce the 2010 winners of two awards for nurses that present the breadth of contributions to sustainable health that can be made by these important medical professionals.
Charlotte Brody Award
The 2010 Charlotte Brody Award is presented to Brenda M. Afzal, MS, RN, Director of Health Programs for the Environmental Health Education Center (EHEC) at the University of Maryland School of Nursing (UMSON). Afzal is responsible for many initiatives including environmental health (EH) education and advocacy and leadership development. Ms. Afzal works at the local, state, and federal level in developing nurses’ capacity to effectively engage in the emerging area of EH.
The Charlotte Brody Award was created in 2006 by HCWH in honor of a lifelong advocate for social change, a registered nurse and activist who has spent her life making the world a safer place for people around the world. The award recognizes a nurse’s endeavors towards “brilliantly lighting the way to a healthier environment and inspiring other nurses to do the same.”
Ms. Afzal has employed her EH expertise concerning drinking water issues while participating on national advisory committees from the National Safe Drinking Water Advisory Council to the U.S. EPA. Professionally, Ms Afzal is active in both the American Nurses Association (ANA) and the American Public Health Association (APHA). Within APHA, she is a governing council member for the Environment Section, a member of the Public Health Nursing Section (PHN), and also served on the PHN section’s Environmental Health Task Force. She was an invited speaker for the Quad council this past conference based on her expertise in water issues.
Ms. Afzal is a founding board member of the Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments (ANHE), a newly formed national alliance of nurses working toward implementing the IOM’s 1995 recommendations in the report “Nursing, Health, and the Environment”.
Hollie Shaner-McRae Nursing Student Essay Contest
Erin M. Johnson, BSN has been chosen as the first prize winner in the 2010 Hollie Shaner-McRae Nursing Student Essay Contest for her essay “Voices of Students.” Ms. Johnson is a 2009 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and is a December 2010 MSN Health Leadership/MPH Candidate at the University of Pennsylvania.
The Hollie Shaner-McRae Nursing Student Essay Contest was created in an effort to spread the word to nursing students of the important role nurses can and do play in advocating for environmental health goals. The focus of the essay was to discuss an environmental sustainability project that the nursing student is currently doing or could potentially become involved in.
Ms. Johnson has close to a decade of experience coordinating educational programs for educational and non-profit organizations including the Center for Environmental Policy at the Academy of Natural Sciences and the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia. She has served as a volunteer and steering committee member in numerous conservation and sustainability organizations, including the Urban Sustainability Forum steering committee in Philadelphia.
Both awards are sponsored by the HCWH Nurses Workgroup in conjunction with the Luminary Project, which is an effort to capture the illuminating stories of nurses' activities to improve human health by improving the health of the environment. The stories on this website (www.TheLuminaryProject.org) show how nurses are creatively and strategically addressing environmental problems and illuminating the way towards safe hospitals; communities with clean air, land and water; and children born without toxic chemicals in their bodies. The Luminary Project is the collaboration of the Nurses Workgroup of Health Care Without Harm and the nurses and nursing organizations who are the Guiding Lights and Beacons for this Project.
The awards will be presented at CleanMed, the international conference for health care sustainability, in Baltimore, MD, in May 2010.
