Integrating Environmental Health into Nursing Practice

Carl Osaki, RS, MSPH is a Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Environmental Health, School of Public Health and Community Medicine, University of Washington. He is a former (retired) Director of Environmental Health, Public Health - Seattle & King County and is a current member of the Washington State Board of Health. He was one of the authors of PACE EH (a nationally recognized community environmental health assessment tool), and is a consultant to environmental health programs nationwide. He is currently managing an Association of Schools of Public Health training grant awarded to the Northwest Center for Public Health Practice that covers six northwest states. This CDC (NCEH) funded project is aimed at helping local and state agencies integrate the Essential Services of Public Health into environmental health practice. Carl has been in public health practice since 1966.

Patricia Butterfield, PhD, RN is Professor and Director of the Office of Research and Scholarship in the School of Nursing at Montana State University-Bozeman. Her areas of research have included: 1) the environmental epidemiology of Parkinson's disease, 2) predicting delayed recovery from occupational injuries and illness, and 3) environmental health exposures to rural children. Dr. Butterfield completed her doctoral work at the School of Nursing at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) and her postdoctoral work at the Center for Research on Occupational and Environmental Toxicology at OHSU. She publishes in the areas of occupational and environmental health, and community health nursing. She is known for her publication titled, "Thinking Upstream: Nurturing a Conceptual Understanding of the Societal Context of Health Behavior", published in Philosophical and Theoretical Perspectives for Advanced Nursing Practice.