REAL SCIENCE

EcoHealth is the brainchild of Dr. Jonathan Patz, Associate Professor at the highly regarded University of Wisconsin in Madison, Wisconsin, where he directs a university-wide initiative on Global Environmental Health. He also directs an special Certificate on Humans and the Global Environment (CHANGE), and teaches a graduate-level course entitled "Health Impact Assessment of Global Environmental Change."

Several years ago, Dr. Patz gave a lecture at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Afterwards, an audience member from a foundation suggested creating a website that would make cutting-edge environmental science accessible to students and teachers. EcoHealth the result of that idea. The site distills Patz' internationally recognized expertise and course materials—along with stacks of scientific research, reports, articles, books, and interviews!

Through EcoHealth's gestation, Dr. Patz, website educator and creative director Marjorie L. Share, and their colleagues have carefully reviewed all material. They continue to monitor and update the site to ensure that it reflects the latest and most accurate scientific information.

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CORE TOPICS

EcoHealth has five major chapters or topics. The first screen or page of each chapter provides a menu of sub-topics or subjects for that chapter. The site map serves as an overall table of contents. Search boxes at the top of each screen allow you to pinpoint particular subjects or areas of interest anywhere on the site.

Taking Our Temperature

• Take a detailed look at global warming and its consequences.
• Find out how climate change may spark extreme weather: droughts, hurricanes, violent storms, and floods.
• Learn how diseases spread and about the risk of new epidemics: cholera, malaria, West Nile virus, SARS, Chagas' disease, and more.
• Discover why El Niño may offer a "sneak preview" of our climatic future.
• Distinguish between good and bad ozone.
• Explore potential solutions to global warming.
  

Hole in the 'Zone

• Get an overview of stratospheric ozone depletion.
• See how ozone forms.
• Learn how scientists discovered the hole in the ozone layer and identified its causes.
• Discover how the sun's rays affect your health and what you can do today to protect yourself.
• Read about international efforts to protect the ozone layer.

Unbalancing Act

• See how human actions disturb the balance of nature.
• Find out how modern agriculture, deforestation, urbanization, diverting rivers, and other human actions affect biodiversity.
• Peer into nature's medicine chest.
• Explore some secrets of animal behavior that could boost your health.
• Learn how environmental degradation causes the spread of disease.

What's Left to Eat?

• Face the challenges of feeding a growing population.
• Learn how water scarcity affects food supplies, malnutrition, and the cost of your groceries.
• Explore the crucial role that worms, bees, and nematodes play on even the most technologically advanced farms.
• Weigh the benefits and costs of industrial farming—e.g., fattening cattle on huge feedlots—and discover alternatives.
• Examine the promises and perils of genetic engineering, our dependence on chemicals for farming, and the growth of fish farming.
  

Our Small World

• See how globalization presents both opportunities and concerns.
• Learn the difficulties of fighting diseases without borders.
• Find out about policing pollution in a global era.
• Understand the "bio" in bioterrorism.

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FEATURES

Glossary: Throughout this site, glossary entries appear in bold brown. Links to the complete glossary appear at the top and bottom of each screen. The glossary was created specifically for EcoHealth, so some words or phrases (such as airport malaria or squalamine), may be too new or specialized to appear in a classroom or household dictionary. Such terms could be the basis of a project or report on how language evolves to reflect new discoveries and insights.

	Purple icons and links appear at the bottom of most EcoHealth topic pages. They lead to pop-up sections that help you connect website material to your own life.
	Blue icons and links appear at the bottom of most EcoHealth pages. They lead to pop-up sections that connect distant scientific topics to daily life.

Images: Photographs, charts, graphs, and maps from diverse sources enrich EcoHealth's topic pages and (we hope!) make the site more appealing.

Links: Throughout EcoHealth, you'll find links to other parts of the site and to external resources, such as NASA, NOAA, or the NIH, where you can learn even more.

Questions & Answers: Grouped by EcoHealth chapter, these can help you explore more deeply the topics that interest you.

Video clips come from Journey to Planet Earth, a PBS television series. They feature people and real situations from around the world that highlight some of the topics discussed in EcoHealth.

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PBS PARTNERSHIP

EcoHealth is a proud partner of Journey to Planet Earth, a television series launched by PBS in 2003. Hosted by award-winning actor and screenwriter Matt Damon, the series explores the relationship between people and the natural world. Short videos from the series appear throughout the website.

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GETTING AROUND

You can explore EcoHealth in a variety of ways:

• The navigation box on the left side of each page links to the site's five major content areas.
• The site map serves as a site-wide table of contents.
• Links at the top and bottom of each screen take you to resource pages.
• Arrows at the top and bottom of each screen help you move around each chapter or major topic.
• You can enter search terms at the top of each screen.

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HOMEWORK

Background Information: Get a solid, up-to-date grounding in a variety of topics that may come up in science class, or even geography and history.

Current Events: Find examples and details related to topics that surface in the news. EcoHealth will help you sort the science from the sound bites.

Images: Use them to make sense of complex topics and to enrich your reports, papers, and presentations.

Links: Connect students with sources for delving deeper into a topic. Help pupils explore the work of NASA, NOAA, CDC, WHO, NIH and other agencies working on the frontiers of science.

Questions & Answers: Grouped by EcoHealth section, these can help you learn more about subjects that interest you—or get a jump on your teacher or classmates.

Updated Information: Find out whether your textbooks and other classroom materials reflect current scientific research. This site will be updated to reflect current research and explorations.

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PROJECT IDEAS

EcoHealth offers students a wealth of information for papers, presentations, and other projects. Here are just a few examples of how you might use the site.

Current Events: Tired of doing the same old article summaries? Try playing newspaper editor or news reporter. Find an article on an environmental or health issue and use EcoHealth to learn more. Then draft "editing notes" that critique the story and offer suggestions for revision.

Ecosystems: Pick an ecosystem, such as a mega city, forest or coral reef to study. Use EcoHealth to learn how global environmental changes have affected that ecosystem.

Debate: Need to do a class presentation? Why not team up with a classmate to research and debate an environmental and health-related topic? Suggested sample topics include:

• All farming should be organic.
• Clean water is a key part of fighting disease.
• Everyone should stop eating fish.
• Genetic engineering is our best tool for feeding everyone on Earth.
• Global warming is just part of a natural cycle.
• Grocery prices don't reflect the true cost of food.
• Malaria and other mosquito-borne diseases can't be stopped.
• Ordinary people can't really do anything to stop the destruction of our environment.
• People worry too much about the environment.
• The U.S. government should raise gasoline taxes to encourage conservation.
• Globalization encourages the spread of diseases.

Observation: Look out the window or walk or bicycle around your neighborhood to identify ten or more things that affect human health. Take photos or make sketches to use in a report or presentation. Some ordinary things that we take for granted such as trees and pavement affect our lives in big ways.

Vocabulary: Create a crossword puzzle or story using entries from the EcoHealth glossary.

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